Paul Ewald: Can we domesticate germs?

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a group of conferences that "brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)." The following video corresponds to a talk by Paul Ewald, director of the program in Evolutionary Medicine at the Biology Department of the University of Louisville; he has written popular news articles, academic papers, and two books. In his conference, Ewald reasons that, for the control of infectious diseases, alternative strategies should be privileged over the never-ending development of more new drugs. The central idea consists of creating conditions that favor the less virulent variants of pathogenic microbes — in contrast to the present rise in drug-resistant strains due to the overuse of anti-infective medicines.



Link for the video at TED (filmed on March 2007): Paul Ewald: Can we domesticate germs?.
Or view it at YouTube.