The germ of an idea

摘要

Louis pasteur, the 19th-century French microbiologist and chemist, is credited with confirming that microbes cause disease. When studying ailing silkworms, he made two vital observations. The first was that la flacherie, as the worms' illness was called, was contagious. This led to the germ theory of disease and, ultimately, to the development of antibiotics to treat infectious illnesses in people. In all the excitement over germs, however, his second observation got overlooked: la flacherie was passed from parent to offspring. Almost 150 years later, the idea that susceptibility to infectious disease can be inherited is finally coming of age. A meeting held last week at the Pasteur Institute in Paris heard how the next generation of drugs will target not the microbial agents of infectious illness but their human hosts.