REINVENTING THE WHEEL. At last, the UK medical profession are using their brains, and phages, by allowing Nature to fight Nature. What have the Big Pharma companies been doing about phages these past 50 years? If they had been less financially concerned about their inability to patent a virus (phages) and more concerned about saving lives, maybe we wouldn't be in this antibiotic-resistant mess. There is, it seems, more profit now to be made from 'life-style' drugs, than from very expensive-to-produce antibiotics. I wonder why..... The next biggest hurdle to the acceptance of phages will be the MHRA, that quango wholly funded by the licences it sells to Big Pharma. It insists, rightly so, that a new medicine/chemical be first rigourously tested (albeit on an relatively small number of people) before it is released for final testing on our populations. This however does not mean the drug is safe, as various scandals over the years have belatedly shown. Still, they could always continue to raise revenues by prosecuting herbalists and alternative practitioners. The reason for insisting on lengthy and expensive trials is to gather evidence that not too many people have died during these trial, or are expected to after release and distribution through doctors' practices. Before anyone throws up their hands in horror at the very thought that drug companies might overlook a few deaths during trials, even though they use specially chosen human guinea pigs who are expected to show the most favourable reaction to the drug, i.e. at least stay alive, recent and earlier evidence of skewed and selective trials reportings should not be forgotten. Maybe this is one reason for Dr. Harper's emphasis on the safety of phages, to distance them from the growing public unease about side effects and a growing realisation that hundreds of UK citizens die annually due to prescription medicines, yet without much official investigation. Can anyone tell me how many drug company directors have been prosecuted following drug-ralated deaths? Trials reports that are 'economical with the truth' are quietly forgotten by governments funded with license fees and VAT revenues. Paradoxically, that phages have successfully and safely been used in Eastern Europe for the last 50 years, without any reported ill effects seems to count for very little with our drugs regulators and NHS mandarins. This must surely be the longest ever drugs trial in history, discounting herbal remedies! When one also considers recent (2007) Polish research showing phages to be 90% cheaper than antibiotics in treating MRSA, one wonders if the NHS ever reads any scientific papers not commissioned by themselves. It is interesting to note that doctors can, and do regularly, prescribe unlicensed drugs, with the patient's consent. The WHO, of which the UK is a signatory, states that doctors "..when all conventional methods have failed, must make alternative treatments known to the patient...". Why then this baffling reluctance to use phages? Simply hiding behind 'more trials are needed' is not good enough, or is it that the onus would rest with the doctor and not with the drug company, or a fear of peer ridicule? At least Dr. Harper and his team are putting their money where their mouths are, and by emphasising yet again that phages are actually safe, are paying more than just lip service to the 1st Hippocratic oath which our regulators and Big Pharma appear to have lost sight of; "First, do no harm". To everyone working with phages, I say "Keep up the good work!" To the NHS I say, "Open your minds". Mike Jozefiak