The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir

by Steffanie Strathdee

If you are interested in the Discussion Guide for The Perfect Predator (for a course or a book club), check it out here: https://theperfectpredator.com/phage-therapy/

“Has anyone told Steff that her husband is going to die?”

I still remember this moment so clearly. I cradled the phone receiver like a baby, and thought, "No, nobody has."

but had a couple of girlfriends who shared similar interests.

My girlfriends and I had a club called HAWK (Help Animals With Kindness) and would go around saving tadpoles and monarch butterflies. I'm still in touch with them today.

In truth, this was also a story about privilege. So many people who are dying of multi-drug-resistant bacterial infections don’t have the connections and resources to call upon that we did.

I'd really like to emphasize this point!

good news-- india pledged to stop using colistin in livestock in 2019.

and is now estimated to have been more than 150,000 in 2010—a seven-fold increase over previous reports.

In Jan 2022, a paper in Lancet estimated that 1.2 million people died from a superbug infection in 2019, and almost 5 million died *with* one. That's more than deaths from HIV or malaria.

other patients

This is now 18 other patients at UCSD and dozens more internationally.

In

This paper was published in the journal Nature Medicine by Detrick et al, in May 2019. You can read some of the press here: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/08/719650709/genetically-modified-viruses-help-save-a-patient-with-a-superbug-infection

New clinical trials of phage therapy are now underway for patients battling superbug infections associated with cystic fibrosis and implanted medical devices.

The US National Institute of Health funded their first phage therapy trial in 2019 which will be co-led by Chip Schooley at IPATH and 19 other sites. COVID delayed its start date but the first patient was enrolled in July, 2022.

Steff and Tom on their wedding day in Hawaii

Tom was nearly 300 lb in this photo. Not anymore!

Steff and Tom tour Luxor, Egypt, in a horse-drawn carriage the day he became ill (November 28, 2015).

Note that there are almost no other tourists but us!

I took this selfie to post to Facebook, thinking that Tom and I would be laughing about this experience in a few days when he got home. I never would have believed that this was just the beginning of what would be a harrowing 9 month hospitalization.