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

by Steffanie Strathdee

Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise. —Albert Camus, The Plague

Drawing of a T4 myophage, similar to several of the bacteriophages used to treat Tom. Drawing by Ben Darby

We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us. —Attributed to Charles Darwin

Drawing of a T7 podophage, similar to the “superkiller” bacteriophage used to treat Tom. Drawing by Ben Darby

When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t. —Attributed to Thomas Edison