"Hundreds of people have caught hellish bacterial infections and turned to Eastern Europe for a centuryold viral therapy. With the world on the cusp of an antibiotics crisis should we all follow suit Rachel George was used to being sick. A genetic condition left her with intellectual disabilities and a weak immune system. By  she had endured dozens of bacterial infections  kidney ear sinus heart bone and more  and taken hundreds of antibiotic pills. But when she entered the Harborview Hospital in Seattle for a foot operation her bodys defenses were pushed to a new limit. Hospitals are hotbeds for nasty  and sometimes deadly  infections. After her surgery Rachels lungs picked up two methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus MRSA and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Both bugs are part of a growing category of bacterial infections that dont respond to traditional antibiotics. Rachel was supposed to be in the hospital for five days. She stayed nine weeks. She developed pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome and was put on a ventilator with a tube down her throat. When her doctors finally released her they told her mother she had three years to live at most before the bugs won. Three years later in January  Rachel was indeed close to death. She was spending half of every month in intensive care the other half at home an IV constantly dripping into her bloodstream. By then she had cycled through more than a dozen powerful antibiotics. Each time the doctors would give her a new drug then watch helplessly as the bacteria overpowered it. Every time we took her back to the hospital it was a question of whether or not this was going to be it her mother Rose George told BuzzFeed News. One day the nurse on duty asked Rose if shed ever considered phage therapy. Rose had never heard of it and thats unsurprising The therapy which uses specialized viruses called bacteriophages to kill bacteria is only available in a handful of former Soviet countries. Rose asked her daughters doctor but shed never heard of phage either. Soon Rose was on the phone with doctors at a small clinic in Tbilisi in the Republic of Georgia ordering  glass vials of viruses at  a pop. Shes one of at least  people desperate enough to try this littleknown viral therapy from Eastern Europe. Its an extreme solution to what may be this centurys biggest medical crisis the death of antibiotics. Since the discovery of penicillin in  scientists have amassed a medical arsenal of more than  antibiotics. The drugs have prevented soldiers from losing limbs and mothers from dying during childbirth. With access to antibiotics parents no longer worry about losing their kid to an ear infection or bad scrape. But now antibiotics are everywhere  not just in orange pill bottles but in the food given to pigs cattle and chicken. And the more the bugs interact with antibiotics the quicker they evolve defense mechanisms. At least  strains of bacteria have evolved into superbugs becoming resistant to most of our drugs. And pharmaceutical companies more interested in profitable blockbusters like Viagra and Zoloft havent developed a new class of antibiotics in  years. Were dying because of it. More than  people in the U.S. die each year from antibioticresistant infections. By  an estimated  million people worldwide will die by superbug. After two decades of warnings from the scientific community the problem is finally getting serious attention. In his  budget proposal released today U.S. President Obama threw . billion at tackling the antibioticresistance crisis  nearly double the amount allocated last year. If approved by Congress this money will go toward screening soil samples for new antibiotics reducing the drugs in livestock feed boosting hospital surveillance and perhaps making phage therapy a viable option in the U.S. Phages are bacterias natural enemies. They work by injecting their DNA inside bacterial cells where they replicate wildly produce new phages and eventually cause the bacteria to rupture  releasing even more viruses to hunt for bacterial prey. Phages power comes from two places They are the most common and diverse organisms on Earth and each phage harms only specific strains of bacteria. When you turn on the faucet millions of phages flow out with your tap water. That leaves a nearly inexhaustible supply of potential agents to use in the fight against infection. Doctors have been using phages to kill bacteria for nearly a century  just not in the U.S. In  a Georgian doctor named George Eliava set up the first phage therapy clinic the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi. Antibiotics hadnt been discovered yet so phages were a revolutionary weapon against all kinds of infections Ryland Young head of the Center for Phage Technology at Texas AM University told BuzzFeed News. It was kind of prescientific  no one knew what these phages were except that they worked. Five years later penicillin came along. Effective cheap and quick to produce in large quantities doctors in the U.S. U.K. and France quickly seized upon the miracle drug as a key to winning World War II. That also meant keeping this weapon away from the Soviets. With no access to antibiotics scientists behind the Iron Curtain bolstered their use of phages instead. At its very peak when they were supplying the Russian army the Eliava Institute was producing two to three tons of phages per day Zamphira Alavidze a microbiologist in Tbilisi who worked at the Eliava Institute for  years told BuzzFeed News. But after the fall of the Soviet Union Eliavas phage production dropped significantly and it downsized into a small research center. Today Georgian doctors frequently use antibiotics to treat infections but often in combination with phages. Every clinic everywhere in Georgia everybody uses the phages Alavidze said. The last decade she added has brought another big change Two small phage clinics in Tbilisi have sprung up to cater specifically to the boom of international patients like Rachel. Ten or fifteen years ago nobody believed the phages would be so popular. They thought we were crazy Alavidze said. Now its not too easy to come to Georgia but we try to help somehow because sometimes nothing else works.   Randy Wolcott a wound care doctor in Lubbock Texas first went to Tbilisi in . He was fed up with the lack of options for his patients with drugresistant infections and wanted to investigate phages as a treatment of last resort. Wolcott spent a week at the Eliava Institute. It looked nothing like the gleaming and sterile highrises of most U.S. hospitals  the building was small some of the equipment looked ancient and the walls were unpainted. But after observing the Georgian clinicians at work Wolcott was sold. He walked into a city pharmacy and bought hundreds of vials of phages concocted for wound infections. They were very cheap and I bought them by the case Wolcott told BuzzFeed News. The only hiccup came when explaining his viral cargo to U.S. customs officials. It can cause some problems when our government hears that youre bringing viruses back from a former Soviet country Wolcott said chuckling. Its hard to explain. Its a virus but its a virus only for bacteria not for us. Phages arent approved for use in the U.S. So once back in Lubbock Wolcott wrote to the Texas Board of Medicine and asked for permission to use the viruses on his wound patients. The board decided that because these patients had exhausted all other options Wolcott would be allowed to use the experimental treatment in a legal arrangement known as compassionate use. Wolcotts patients saw improvement within days. In  of the cases the patients wounds healed enough to save their limbs. He treated hundreds of patients using the original batch of phages he brought over from Tbilisi. Five years ago he went back for more. Wolcott usually uses the phages in combination with traditional antibiotics. But he says he couldnt have offered the same quality of treatment without the viruses. Someone needs to do this in America Wolcott said. To have a bank of stuff that we can turn to for these chronic infections That would be huge. Until that happens though patients are looking abroad. Rose Georges internet search led her to a clinic in Tbilisi called the Phage Therapy Center. It was set up in  by Phage International a fledgling medical tourism outfit founded in Danville California by a computer scientist named Chris Smith. The centers doctors asked Rose to send over a bacterial sample from Rachels lungs. Over the course of a month Rose attempted to send several samples but each was rejected by U.S. customs. Roses son tried driving a sample across the border into Canada which led to a sevenhour interrogation by Canadian agents followed by two more hours with the FBI on the U.S. side. Finally Smith suggested that Rose ambiguously label the package as medical records. She did and the shipment slipped through. A few weeks later the Georgian doctors called Rose with good news They would be able to design a concoction of phages to treat Rachels infections. After convincing Rachels doctor to write a prescription for the viruses so they could cross the U.S. border Rose paid the Georgian clinic  for a threemonth supply. She was surprised that phages were so inexpensive in contrast her insurance company was forking over roughly  a month for Rachels antibiotics. A couple of weeks later  boxes filled with  vials of phages landed on the Georges doorstep. Rose used a nebulizer to administer the phages twice a day so that Rachel could breathe the liquids into her lungs. Within three weeks Rachels MRSA  the same infection shed been fighting with antibiotics for three years  disappeared. It hasnt returned in the five years since. Advocates of phage therapy see it as a powerful new weapon in the war were quickly losing against bacterial infection. But phages are certainly not a cureall. Just ask Roger Mintey a yearold retired accountant from the sleepy English town of Reigate. In  Mintey caught a severe sinus infection that left him with a nearconstant cold. Hes had it on and off ever since. In the first decade of fighting his illness Mintey sought help at five English hospitals underwent two surgeries and took more than two dozen courses of antibiotics. Nothing worked. In  he heard about phage therapy from his cousins wife whod gone to Tbilisi to treat a chronic bladder infection. She pointed Roger to Phage International the same company that helped Rose George get her daughters phages. The Georgian doctors affiliated with the company said they could treat his sinus infection so Mintey cut Phage International a check for  and sent a sample of his nasal discharge to Georgia via FedEx. Then accompanied by a friend he boarded his firstever plane to fly to the companys Phage Therapy Center. They landed in Tbilisi at  a.m. and were met by someone from the clinic who escorted them to their hotel. Mintey was instructed to drink a phage preparation three times a day from his hotel room. Every couple of days he would go into the clinic for additional phage treatments. The clinic was inside a nondescript building set up something like an indoor mall. You went through a set of double doors passed by a suntanning place and there you were one office two treatment rooms and that was it Mintey told BuzzFeed News. A doctor and two nurses had him sit on a cushioned patients chair. They tipped the chair back so his nostrils faced up and poured the phage liquid into his nose. He was instructed to say the word cuckoo as the phages slowly slid into all of his sinuses seeping out from his nasal passages into his forehead and cheekbones. His nose started bleeding but the clinicians told him it was nothing to worry about. They also gave him a shot of manuka honey extract in his butt telling him it had antimicrobial properties. It was all quite uncomfortable Mintey said. After two weeks Mintey flew back to England. Three days later his infection was back. I realized the entire treatment had done absolutely nothing he said. Mintey claims to have called emailed faxed and sent physical letters to his doctors in Georgia and to Phage Internationals headquarters in California. He heard nothing back. Smith of Phage International claims that emails sent to Roger at the time were bouncing and that he only had Minteys friends phone number. Eventually the clinic sent Mintey more phages in the mail but the infection persisted. He says he has not heard from them since. I was very disappointed Mintey said. By the end of  I had given up on phages. Minteys situation highlights many of the difficulties surrounding a therapy only accessible through a small and largely unregulated medical tourism industry. Smith says Phage International has served more than  patients to date with some  registered on its website. He wants to open a new phage therapy clinic in Trinidad which could be easier for American patients to visit. During the past  years youd go to an investor or venture capitalist and theyd never heard of phage  and they didnt want to know about it he said. Now thats changed. Nothing about Phage International is decidedly illegal I. Glenn Cohen a law professor at Harvards PetrieFlom Center for Health Law Policy Biotechnology and Bioethics told BuzzFeed News. But there are many ethical issues at play. What happens when something goes wrong Or as in Rogers case when a patient feels like hes not getting what he paid for Who do you go after Where do you do it Cohen said. Thats where things get more tricky. This year two clinical trials are testing phage treatment against several antibioticresistant infections. The first called Phagoburn is big testing  burn victims at three European hospitals with a . million investment from the European Union. The second led by a Richmond Virginiabased biotech called AmpliPhi is smaller and privately funded but will include a collaboration with the U.S. Army which has a vested interest in treating wounded soldiers. Both studies will be an important first step in giving phage therapy the credibility it will need to pass muster with the Food and Drug Administration FDA and to gain the support of drug companies needed to fund its eventual commercial development. Big pharmaceutical companies like stuff to appear in bottles and in tablets Jeremy Curnock Cook AmpliPhis CEO told BuzzFeed News. Theyre waiting for people like us to come back with the clinical data. But the biggest obstacle for phage therapy in the U.S. may ultimately have less to do with the science than its implementation into the medical system. Rachel George and Roger Mintey both received personalized phage treatments meaning that the viruses were selected to specifically attack their particular infections. Its uncertain whether the FDA would be able to adopt such a tailormade approach which stands in such stark contrast to the onesizefitsmost approach of antibiotics. Whats more because of the number and diversity of phages  and a regulatory system thats been set up to deal with manufactured chemicals rather than the messiness of nature  each phage would have to be tested as its own drug even if its used in combination. In a concoction of nine phages designed to treat a mixture of three bacteria that could mean hundreds of trials. Depending on who you ask this is viewed as anything from costly to impossible. Regardless of whether phage therapy reaches widescale use one thing is clear Sticking to the status quo is not an option. With  million Americans a year acquiring bacterial infections that are no longer thwarted by antibiotics the era of blissful overdependence on these onetime miracle drugs is drawing to a close. Im quite optimistic about the future of phage says Randy Kincaid senior scientific officer for the arm of the National Institutes of Health that will be overseeing phage therapy development. But I think until  and unless  people take the more structured approach to understanding and using and developing the treatment well always be asking what if What if wed only done it better what if wed only done it the right way. For Rose George the knotty issues surrounding phage therapy are all beside the point. The Phage Therapy Center gave her access to a treatment she couldnt get in her own country. And that treatment is still ongoing. Though phages cleared one of Rachels infections beautifully the other  the Pseudomonas  is a stubborn bug. Every three months the Phage Therapy Center asks Rose to send a new sample from Rachels lungs and when the bacteria mutates they send a new mixture of phages. Somehow the infection persists. But Rose is grateful that Rachels infections are finally under control. While the hospital is still their second home because of Rachels numerous other health issues  she recently had hip replacement surgery and had her gallbladder removed  the infections are no longer what are bringing here there. These people saved my daughters life Rose said. It is crazy that its not part of our arsenal."