Are high-tech alternatives to surgery better?

Q. But all the advances in technology don't always help when it comes to treating disease. What are medical scientists concerned about in the 21st century?

A. Drug-resistant staph has become an enormous problem in prisons and hospitals and gyms. In prisons, it’s very hard to control because prisoners are close together.

The first big outbreak was in the L.A. county jail and now they call it the "new normal." It's there all the time. It really terrifies prison guards. In some cases guards’ families get it. It’s very scary.

They would like to give the prisoners clean uniforms more often, but it becomes budget issues and no one wants to give more money to prisoners. Prisoners aren’t the most obedient people in the world, either. They don’t listen when you tell them to wash their hands all the time.

It goes to show that all the amazing computer technology that we’re talking about, we still have infectious disease threats.

Q. What is the illness?

A. The illness is a painful skin infection that doesn’t go away for a long time. When it started, they initially thought it was spider bites.

In one in ten cases, it can get in the blood and make people very sick. There have been some pediatric deaths. It’s not necessarily fatal, but anytime you have an infection you can’t treat, it’s very frightening.

Antibiotic resistant bacteria is an increasing problem in hospitals, in particular. It has been going on for a long time. It’s a reflection of who comes into the jails. It didn’t exist a few years ago. The new strains have only appeared recently because of overused antibiotics.

Q. What is the scientific community doing to try to overcome resistance to antibiotics?

A. There are a lot of campaigns to get doctors use fewer antibiotics and the public to accept that you can’t always have an antibiotic.

We use an enormous amount of antibiotics in this society. Because natural selection of bacteria will evolve to get around them, and they do, drug companies are trying to develop new antibiotics. But I don’t think anybody thinks the bacteria will lose that race.

Bacteria can mutate a lot faster than drug companies can develop antibiotics.

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