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The Good Virus: The Amazing Story and Forgotten Promise of the Phage
At every moment, within your body and all around you, trillions of microscopic combatants are fighting an invisible war. Countless times per second, viruses known as bacteriophages invade and destroy bacteria from within, leaving all other cells, including our own, miraculously unharmed. These “phages” are the most abundant, diverse biological entity on Earth—but also the most underappreciated and misunderstood.
The Good Virus tells their strange, remarkable story for the first time, from their discovery by a renegade French Canadian scientist more than a century ago to their emergence in the present day as our unlikely allies in the struggle against antibiotic-resistant infections. We learn how this “phage therapy” was repeatedly shunned by Western medicine but flourished behind the Iron Curtain, and follow scientists now unlocking how phages shape evolution and life on our planet at large. Celebrating the paradoxical power of viruses to heal, not harm, The Good Virus will change how you see nature’s most maligned life forms.
The Good Virus tells their strange, remarkable story for the first time, from their discovery by a renegade French Canadian scientist more than a century ago to their emergence in the present day as our unlikely allies in the struggle against antibiotic-resistant infections. We learn how this “phage therapy” was repeatedly shunned by Western medicine but flourished behind the Iron Curtain, and follow scientists now unlocking how phages shape evolution and life on our planet at large. Celebrating the paradoxical power of viruses to heal, not harm, The Good Virus will change how you see nature’s most maligned life forms.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published July 19, 2023
143 people are currently reading
4369 people want to read
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August 27, 2025
This well researched book deserves it's high rating. Even though I have studied nutrition and have a general interest in health care, I still found myself learning new things in every chapter.
It starts out with a history of the development of phages alongside the history and development of antibiotics. The author then explains how phages work and what problems might come up in our use of them. Part 4 and 5 goes further into how phages might help us overcome some of the health care problems that are sure to come due due to antibiotic resistance.
Phages are viruses that can infect bacteria and hence have a potential use as an antibiotic. Phages are constantly evolving. This means there are huge numbers of them which makes it very hard to classify them as scientists love to do. Some phages are generalists, able to infect a broad range of species of bacteria, and some are hyper-specific, only able to infect particular strains of bacteria.
Bacteria are also constantly evolving, but they can develop resistance to antibiotics in many different ways, not just through evolution. Some bacteria already have resistance mechanisms in place. As antibiotics become more prevalent in the environment, the bacteria will select for this resistant mechanism and it will become more dominant in the gene pool. The author points out that antibiotic resistance shows up even in places with very little antibiotic usage. When watching a program on The Great Courses, I learned that even the Hadza (one of the last remaining hunter gatherer groups) have antibiotic resistance despite having never been exposed to antibiotics suggesting that it is environmentally derived. This means that antibiotic resistance is a global problem.
The good news is, "When you get resistance to a phage, there are hundreds, thousands, possibly millions of other ones out there you can try." In fact, there are so many viruses on Earth that they are easily the most abundant biological entity.
Recent research suggests that our bodies actively co-opt and deploy phages as part of our immune health and that through our guts we absorb as well as host tens of billions of phages each day. Phage infections may even liberate useful nutrients that are locked up inside gut bacteria.
So why are phages not a commonly used word in English as is the word antibiotic? Phages grew up in The Soviet Union and antibiotics grew up in the West. Phages were "communist" medicine and could not be trusted! Biologists used them for research and that was about it. The Cold War is past but problems remain. Getting phages through large-scale clinical trials is very difficult because every body reacts differently, dosing is a guessing game, and most importantly, there's not enough money in it for the pharmaceutical industry. Those are just a few of the problems that await phage therapy. The author goes into many more.
Though a single type of phage is not likely to completely eradicate a bacterial pathogen from the body, it could degrade the population to the point where antibiotics are effective or where different phages might clear out the rest. This suggests that medicine of the future may need to be more personalized.
I look forward to hearing more about phages in the future. There are some companies working on research in this area even in the United States now. Hopefully soon, people won't need to travel outside of the US or apply for emergency medical use authorization to get this treatment. As antibiotics become less effective, phages may be the future of medicine.
It starts out with a history of the development of phages alongside the history and development of antibiotics. The author then explains how phages work and what problems might come up in our use of them. Part 4 and 5 goes further into how phages might help us overcome some of the health care problems that are sure to come due due to antibiotic resistance.
Phages are viruses that can infect bacteria and hence have a potential use as an antibiotic. Phages are constantly evolving. This means there are huge numbers of them which makes it very hard to classify them as scientists love to do. Some phages are generalists, able to infect a broad range of species of bacteria, and some are hyper-specific, only able to infect particular strains of bacteria.
Bacteria are also constantly evolving, but they can develop resistance to antibiotics in many different ways, not just through evolution. Some bacteria already have resistance mechanisms in place. As antibiotics become more prevalent in the environment, the bacteria will select for this resistant mechanism and it will become more dominant in the gene pool. The author points out that antibiotic resistance shows up even in places with very little antibiotic usage. When watching a program on The Great Courses, I learned that even the Hadza (one of the last remaining hunter gatherer groups) have antibiotic resistance despite having never been exposed to antibiotics suggesting that it is environmentally derived. This means that antibiotic resistance is a global problem.
The good news is, "When you get resistance to a phage, there are hundreds, thousands, possibly millions of other ones out there you can try." In fact, there are so many viruses on Earth that they are easily the most abundant biological entity.
Recent research suggests that our bodies actively co-opt and deploy phages as part of our immune health and that through our guts we absorb as well as host tens of billions of phages each day. Phage infections may even liberate useful nutrients that are locked up inside gut bacteria.
So why are phages not a commonly used word in English as is the word antibiotic? Phages grew up in The Soviet Union and antibiotics grew up in the West. Phages were "communist" medicine and could not be trusted! Biologists used them for research and that was about it. The Cold War is past but problems remain. Getting phages through large-scale clinical trials is very difficult because every body reacts differently, dosing is a guessing game, and most importantly, there's not enough money in it for the pharmaceutical industry. Those are just a few of the problems that await phage therapy. The author goes into many more.
Though a single type of phage is not likely to completely eradicate a bacterial pathogen from the body, it could degrade the population to the point where antibiotics are effective or where different phages might clear out the rest. This suggests that medicine of the future may need to be more personalized.
I look forward to hearing more about phages in the future. There are some companies working on research in this area even in the United States now. Hopefully soon, people won't need to travel outside of the US or apply for emergency medical use authorization to get this treatment. As antibiotics become less effective, phages may be the future of medicine.
March 23, 2024
i’m left a little torn at the end of the book, oscillating between three and four stars.
by far, i considered the second half of the book to be stronger than the first half, with the second half expanding more on the science being discovered. something that i look for when it comes to popular science books is how well they can appeal to the average reader and how they can explain science in layman’s terms, and ireland does fantastically in the second half.
not so much in the first half, unfortunately. in some places, especially the section about phage therapy and compassionate-use clauses, he was overly enthusiastic about the therapeutic uses and potentials of bacteriophages without fully explaining why. i also felt like the first half was more disorganized than the second, jumping back and forth between specific figures in history, rather than honing in on a specific storyline. the story meanders a bit before eventually returning to tbilisi, georgia, and i almost wish that there had been some more focus and specificity there.
i did appreciate the witty quips about scientists’ personal lives, with the sections on watson and delbrück earning a laugh from me. overall, this feels more like a history book with a few touches of science here and there, and although that’s not a bad nonfiction book to read, it’s not what i was expecting based off the jacket cover summary.
by far, i considered the second half of the book to be stronger than the first half, with the second half expanding more on the science being discovered. something that i look for when it comes to popular science books is how well they can appeal to the average reader and how they can explain science in layman’s terms, and ireland does fantastically in the second half.
not so much in the first half, unfortunately. in some places, especially the section about phage therapy and compassionate-use clauses, he was overly enthusiastic about the therapeutic uses and potentials of bacteriophages without fully explaining why. i also felt like the first half was more disorganized than the second, jumping back and forth between specific figures in history, rather than honing in on a specific storyline. the story meanders a bit before eventually returning to tbilisi, georgia, and i almost wish that there had been some more focus and specificity there.
i did appreciate the witty quips about scientists’ personal lives, with the sections on watson and delbrück earning a laugh from me. overall, this feels more like a history book with a few touches of science here and there, and although that’s not a bad nonfiction book to read, it’s not what i was expecting based off the jacket cover summary.
June 30, 2023
What an amazing popular science book! I can’t remember the last time I thoroughly enjoyed reading one as much as this one. The Good Virus is truly a marvel from beginning to end!
Don’t know what a phage is? Prepare to have your eyes opened and your mind blown because once you learn about these nifty little viruses, you won’t look at things the same way again. A virus is often a ‘dirty’ word and one that is associated with plagues, death, disease and illness. But phages are a breed apart. They hold such potential to revolutionise healthcare and the way in which we live, it’s certainly a ‘watch this space science’.
From key players in phage discovery, to case studies and the amazing researchers involved in the science now, there’s so much to learn from this book. Whether you’re a scientist, a science lover or someone who would love to know a little bit more about this area with no scientific background at all, it’s a book for everyone.
It’s written superbly and in such a way that it’s accessible for all. It effortlessly breaks down complicated science into easy to understand nuggets and in such a way that you’ll enjoy it all along the way. I already knew a little about phages and it’s early beginnings and applications but there was so much I learnt and am still yet to know! It really is such an interesting area of science so it’s a must read for all.
Thank you to the author and publisher for this book on NetGalley in return for my honest thoughts and review.
Don’t know what a phage is? Prepare to have your eyes opened and your mind blown because once you learn about these nifty little viruses, you won’t look at things the same way again. A virus is often a ‘dirty’ word and one that is associated with plagues, death, disease and illness. But phages are a breed apart. They hold such potential to revolutionise healthcare and the way in which we live, it’s certainly a ‘watch this space science’.
From key players in phage discovery, to case studies and the amazing researchers involved in the science now, there’s so much to learn from this book. Whether you’re a scientist, a science lover or someone who would love to know a little bit more about this area with no scientific background at all, it’s a book for everyone.
It’s written superbly and in such a way that it’s accessible for all. It effortlessly breaks down complicated science into easy to understand nuggets and in such a way that you’ll enjoy it all along the way. I already knew a little about phages and it’s early beginnings and applications but there was so much I learnt and am still yet to know! It really is such an interesting area of science so it’s a must read for all.
Thank you to the author and publisher for this book on NetGalley in return for my honest thoughts and review.
October 18, 2025
‘The Good Virus: The Amazing Story and Forgotten Promise of the Phage’ by Tom Ireland is eye-opening! I not only was impressed by the wealth of research that went into the book, I was also amazed by what, to me, was brand new information about an important virus type I didn’t know was a virus! I had heard of phages, but only when cell defenses against bacteria in our human blood are mentioned in the many science books and articles I’ve read in the past. Little did I know phages are viruses! And that there are more of them than any other microscopic life form on earth! And that there probably is a bacteriophage designed to kill every type of bacteria that exists! An interest in studying phages by more and more laboratories around the world is occurring because of the growing numbers of bacteria that have evolved resistance to the antibiotics in use.
There is a great deal more to learn in this informative science book. The author uses biographies of scientists - professional and some showy and very weird amateurs - to describe the history of discovery of phages and the remarkable cures they can do. They are more powerful than antibiotics, but unfortunately phages rapidly evolve, they are difficult to mass produce, and they tend to focus on one kind of bacteria as long as that bacteria doesn’t develop a resistance or mutate as bacteria tends to do. However, phages also rapidly mutate.
When bacteriophages are isolated by scientists and are applied by doctors to cure patients of deadly diseases, they work quickly and efficiently in ‘eating’ the bacteria that is sickening or killing a patient. However, consistent reproducible protocols to test, and any process to ‘manufacture’ them per CDC standards, are impossible to do at this time. This hasn’t stopped a threadbare lab in the ex-Soviet state of Georgia from selling phage treatments, though. They isolate the specific phage through straining a person’s bodily fluids and placing the strained fluid into Petri dishes with the bacteria causing the disease, then watch for signs of having captured the specific phages killing the bacteria. The captured phages have already begun growing inside a sick person’s body which can cure the disease a patient is suffering from, so the lab grows more of them and gives the mass-produced phages to the patient, provide a bed and medical care, a process fully described in the book. It is expensive to do, since it basically is curing one patient at a time with an individualized phage which works for that patient. They keep a record of the phage. Some bacteriophages will continue to work against a specific disease and can be used for other patients with that specific disease, others will no longer cure that disease after awhile, and some phages work in some people and not others at all.
Yet there are more phages and types of phages existing than any other type of microscopic critter! People all over the world are taking dirty water samples from filthy rivers, swamps, lakes dumps, etc., sending the dirty water to labs which examine the fluid with scanning electron microscopes, or strain and test the resulting strained fluid on bacteria in controlled experiments to see if different types of bacteria are affected by the captured viruses. Millions of new phages have been discovered this way.
It is possible a bacteriophage kick-started life on earth, who knows? I am not any kind of scientist, as this barebones and very likely screwed-up description of what I understand of what I read in the book very likely reveals, gentler reader, but I can enthusiastically recommend this far more better professionally detailed and research-backed science book. It has been written for the general reader.
I have copied the book blurb:
”At every moment, within your body and all around you, trillions of microscopic combatants are fighting an invisible war. Countless times per second, viruses known as bacteriophages invade and destroy bacteria from within, leaving all other cells, including our own, miraculously unharmed. These “phages” are the most abundant, diverse biological entity on Earth—but also the most underappreciated and misunderstood.
The Good Virus tells their strange, remarkable story for the first time, from their discovery by a renegade French Canadian scientist more than a century ago to their emergence in the present day as our unlikely allies in the struggle against antibiotic-resistant infections. We learn how this “phage therapy” was repeatedly shunned by Western medicine but flourished behind the Iron Curtain, and follow scientists now unlocking how phages shape evolution and life on our planet at large. Celebrating the paradoxical power of viruses to heal, not harm, The Good Virus will change how you see nature’s most maligned life forms.”
The book has a References and Notes, and Index sections. There is also a short “A Field Guide to Phages” with hand drawn illustrations of how some phages appear under a scanning electron microscope. They are very very bizarre looking indeed!
There is a great deal more to learn in this informative science book. The author uses biographies of scientists - professional and some showy and very weird amateurs - to describe the history of discovery of phages and the remarkable cures they can do. They are more powerful than antibiotics, but unfortunately phages rapidly evolve, they are difficult to mass produce, and they tend to focus on one kind of bacteria as long as that bacteria doesn’t develop a resistance or mutate as bacteria tends to do. However, phages also rapidly mutate.
When bacteriophages are isolated by scientists and are applied by doctors to cure patients of deadly diseases, they work quickly and efficiently in ‘eating’ the bacteria that is sickening or killing a patient. However, consistent reproducible protocols to test, and any process to ‘manufacture’ them per CDC standards, are impossible to do at this time. This hasn’t stopped a threadbare lab in the ex-Soviet state of Georgia from selling phage treatments, though. They isolate the specific phage through straining a person’s bodily fluids and placing the strained fluid into Petri dishes with the bacteria causing the disease, then watch for signs of having captured the specific phages killing the bacteria. The captured phages have already begun growing inside a sick person’s body which can cure the disease a patient is suffering from, so the lab grows more of them and gives the mass-produced phages to the patient, provide a bed and medical care, a process fully described in the book. It is expensive to do, since it basically is curing one patient at a time with an individualized phage which works for that patient. They keep a record of the phage. Some bacteriophages will continue to work against a specific disease and can be used for other patients with that specific disease, others will no longer cure that disease after awhile, and some phages work in some people and not others at all.
Yet there are more phages and types of phages existing than any other type of microscopic critter! People all over the world are taking dirty water samples from filthy rivers, swamps, lakes dumps, etc., sending the dirty water to labs which examine the fluid with scanning electron microscopes, or strain and test the resulting strained fluid on bacteria in controlled experiments to see if different types of bacteria are affected by the captured viruses. Millions of new phages have been discovered this way.
It is possible a bacteriophage kick-started life on earth, who knows? I am not any kind of scientist, as this barebones and very likely screwed-up description of what I understand of what I read in the book very likely reveals, gentler reader, but I can enthusiastically recommend this far more better professionally detailed and research-backed science book. It has been written for the general reader.
I have copied the book blurb:
”At every moment, within your body and all around you, trillions of microscopic combatants are fighting an invisible war. Countless times per second, viruses known as bacteriophages invade and destroy bacteria from within, leaving all other cells, including our own, miraculously unharmed. These “phages” are the most abundant, diverse biological entity on Earth—but also the most underappreciated and misunderstood.
The Good Virus tells their strange, remarkable story for the first time, from their discovery by a renegade French Canadian scientist more than a century ago to their emergence in the present day as our unlikely allies in the struggle against antibiotic-resistant infections. We learn how this “phage therapy” was repeatedly shunned by Western medicine but flourished behind the Iron Curtain, and follow scientists now unlocking how phages shape evolution and life on our planet at large. Celebrating the paradoxical power of viruses to heal, not harm, The Good Virus will change how you see nature’s most maligned life forms.”
The book has a References and Notes, and Index sections. There is also a short “A Field Guide to Phages” with hand drawn illustrations of how some phages appear under a scanning electron microscope. They are very very bizarre looking indeed!
October 26, 2025
[25 October 2025]
Some viruses cause Covid. Some viruses cause cancer. And some viruses cure bacterial infections. That last kind are called bacteriophages, or phages for short. And they have a spotty history.
This book is the history of how phages were discovered, investigated, ignored, discounted, rediscovered, reinvestigated, and are now coming into vogue. It's an interesting history and the author tells it pretty well.
These organisms have a lot of promise especially in the areas of antibiotic resistant infections, which have become a major problem in today's medical environment. But they're hard to commoditize, so hard to make a profit from, so drug companies aren't very interested. But there are lots of scientists who are.
I think I would like to have had a little more of the science of how these molecules are structured and how they work, but that's a personal complaint. The book works without it. I can strongly recommend it.
Some viruses cause Covid. Some viruses cause cancer. And some viruses cure bacterial infections. That last kind are called bacteriophages, or phages for short. And they have a spotty history.
This book is the history of how phages were discovered, investigated, ignored, discounted, rediscovered, reinvestigated, and are now coming into vogue. It's an interesting history and the author tells it pretty well.
These organisms have a lot of promise especially in the areas of antibiotic resistant infections, which have become a major problem in today's medical environment. But they're hard to commoditize, so hard to make a profit from, so drug companies aren't very interested. But there are lots of scientists who are.
I think I would like to have had a little more of the science of how these molecules are structured and how they work, but that's a personal complaint. The book works without it. I can strongly recommend it.
January 19, 2025
This book has an excellent introduction and an excellent illustrated phage zoo at the end. But in between it's all personalities and politics, which I did not bother to read.
July 15, 2024
This book was recommended by a friend studying medicine, who said I would love it, and she was SO right! I didn’t know anything about bacteriophages, but found myself absolutely swept up in this page-turner of scientific intrigue, especially when it came to the history of the study & use of the phage within the Republic of Georgia. I found myself rooting for this underdog, overlooked, unique medical treatment, scorned by the west due to its Soviet-associations, and the inherent challenge of getting FDA-approval. Considering the seriousness of antibiotic resistance in today’s world, this is absolutely something that should be explored to its full potential.
Here are some notable excerpts:
“There are a few places in the world today where you can walk into a pharmacy and buy a packet of smartly branded medical-grade bacteriophages. After a brief chat with a pharmacist, you swing a few milliliters of yellowish liquid from a small glass ampule or rub a phage-infused ointment onto your spots or abscess or wounds, and hope the trillions of viruses you have just ingested or absorbed can counter whatever bacterial malady is plaguing you. One of these places is Georgia, the mountainous former Soviet state squeezed between Russia’s southernmost tip and Turkey. In Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, crumbling Soviet-era tower blocks rise up between grand old wood-fronted apartments, ancient churches, mosques and fortresses. The concrete-coloured river Mtkvari runs fast and high through the city’s discombobulating mix of Georgian, European, Soviet and Middle Eastern architecture. Road signs, shops fronts and billboards are all embellished with the unique and ancient looping lettering of the Georgian alphabet, a script unlike any other in the world. Every year hundreds of foreign patients make the difficult journey to Tbilisi seeking a therapy the rest of the world abandoned long ago.”
“Despite the sometimes stunning results that could be achieved with these viruses, official studies remained haphazardly planned and the phages themselves were poorly understood - making huge swaths of literature hard to interpret or believe. To the notoriously monolingual scientific world. The more convincing studies published in Georgian, Russian and even those in French might as well not have existed.”
“The Georgians are a notoriously hospitable bunch but I sense they are tired of telling the world what they can do. People are still ‘discovering’ the little-known Soviet treatment almost twenty-five years after journalists first reported from the Eliava Institute. Chanishvili has met countless journalists before me, and isn’t hugely optimistic that the narrative will change anytime soon.”
“An oft-cited statistic is that by 2050, at least ten million people will die each year from antibiotic-resistant infections. But what is less well published is that up to 90% of those deaths are predicted to occur in Africa and Asia, where antibiotic use is soaring and access to alternatives is poor. So, while investment is now pouring into ‘phage therapy 2.0’, via glamorous West Coast start-ups and gleaming European teaching hospitals, the focus of our efforts in the war against deadly bacteria should arguably be focused on approaches that can deliver for the resource-poor countries in the global south.”
“Even if the results of the latest clinical trials are positive, the same old questions remain: how will regulators approve a treatment when the actual mix of viruses used may be different for each patient? Do we really know enough about the complex, cell-popping, gene-swapping behavior of phages to use them regularly in our bodies? Should cocktails of phages be developed that might work on a wide range of patients with similar conditions, or should each and every patient have a bespoke set of phages found for their particular strain of bacteria? Do doctors really understand what will happen when phages are injected into the body, and how should they respond when resistance to the phages they are using emerges? How can such complex and labor-intensive medicine ever be available to millions of people?”
Here are some notable excerpts:
“There are a few places in the world today where you can walk into a pharmacy and buy a packet of smartly branded medical-grade bacteriophages. After a brief chat with a pharmacist, you swing a few milliliters of yellowish liquid from a small glass ampule or rub a phage-infused ointment onto your spots or abscess or wounds, and hope the trillions of viruses you have just ingested or absorbed can counter whatever bacterial malady is plaguing you. One of these places is Georgia, the mountainous former Soviet state squeezed between Russia’s southernmost tip and Turkey. In Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, crumbling Soviet-era tower blocks rise up between grand old wood-fronted apartments, ancient churches, mosques and fortresses. The concrete-coloured river Mtkvari runs fast and high through the city’s discombobulating mix of Georgian, European, Soviet and Middle Eastern architecture. Road signs, shops fronts and billboards are all embellished with the unique and ancient looping lettering of the Georgian alphabet, a script unlike any other in the world. Every year hundreds of foreign patients make the difficult journey to Tbilisi seeking a therapy the rest of the world abandoned long ago.”
“Despite the sometimes stunning results that could be achieved with these viruses, official studies remained haphazardly planned and the phages themselves were poorly understood - making huge swaths of literature hard to interpret or believe. To the notoriously monolingual scientific world. The more convincing studies published in Georgian, Russian and even those in French might as well not have existed.”
“The Georgians are a notoriously hospitable bunch but I sense they are tired of telling the world what they can do. People are still ‘discovering’ the little-known Soviet treatment almost twenty-five years after journalists first reported from the Eliava Institute. Chanishvili has met countless journalists before me, and isn’t hugely optimistic that the narrative will change anytime soon.”
“An oft-cited statistic is that by 2050, at least ten million people will die each year from antibiotic-resistant infections. But what is less well published is that up to 90% of those deaths are predicted to occur in Africa and Asia, where antibiotic use is soaring and access to alternatives is poor. So, while investment is now pouring into ‘phage therapy 2.0’, via glamorous West Coast start-ups and gleaming European teaching hospitals, the focus of our efforts in the war against deadly bacteria should arguably be focused on approaches that can deliver for the resource-poor countries in the global south.”
“Even if the results of the latest clinical trials are positive, the same old questions remain: how will regulators approve a treatment when the actual mix of viruses used may be different for each patient? Do we really know enough about the complex, cell-popping, gene-swapping behavior of phages to use them regularly in our bodies? Should cocktails of phages be developed that might work on a wide range of patients with similar conditions, or should each and every patient have a bespoke set of phages found for their particular strain of bacteria? Do doctors really understand what will happen when phages are injected into the body, and how should they respond when resistance to the phages they are using emerges? How can such complex and labor-intensive medicine ever be available to millions of people?”
May 7, 2024
"The Good Virus" delves into the fascinating world of bacteriophages. If you're unfamiliar with these tiny marvels, I recommend looking them up and marveling at their resemblance to alien creatures that seemed to be crossed with the lunar landers.
Bacteriophages are viruses that specialize in infecting and replicating within bacteria, ultimately causing the bacteria to burst and release new phages. Phages are specific to bacteria types.
Bacteriophages are among the most common and diverse entities in the world, found wherever bacteria exist. It is estimated there are more bacteriophages on the planet than every other organism on Earth, including bacteria, combined.
So, why are they considered the "good virus"? Bacteriophages play a crucial role in controlling bacterial populations. They can regulate the growth of both beneficial and harmful bacteria, making them promising candidates for combating antibiotic-resistant strains. Russia has been utilizing phage therapy since the 1920s. On the plus side, they have little to no side effects.
So where has this been our whole lives? Great question. Since this type of “therapy” cannot be patented by pharmaceutical companies there is little incentive to pursue this. Also, the FDA cannot approve this because each “batch” is not tightly controlled. So, no help on this front.
Two takeaways for me. First, the design of the human body and our world is an amazing thing. Built in checks and balances. We have the capacity to tap into this and make the world a better place. Secondly, despite the effectiveness of simple remedies like phage therapy, they often take a back seat to new pharmaceuticals heavily marketed to consumers.
Overall, "The Good Virus" is an enlightening read that sheds light on a potentially game-changing approach to combating bacterial infections. It underscores the importance of exploring alternative treatments that leverage nature's solutions for the betterment of human health.
November 29, 2024
I think this is one of the best popular science books I have ever read. Phages, or viruses that infect bacteria, are rarely known by the non-specialized public. But the author manages to communicate effectively not only the importance these tiny entities might have for the development of future treatments of deadly bacterial infections, but also how crucial they were in historical events such as the battle of Stalingrad during the second World War. Showing also how discoveries and the path of scientific knowledge is dictated by human traits at the individual, local, and global level, makes us wonder what other wonders in nature remain obscured by them.
It is easy to realize how passionate Tom Ireland is about the topic because of the enthusiasm of his writing and the enormous effort he made to collect all the knowledge, scientific and historical, to deliver this fantastic book.
It is easy to realize how passionate Tom Ireland is about the topic because of the enthusiasm of his writing and the enormous effort he made to collect all the knowledge, scientific and historical, to deliver this fantastic book.
July 5, 2024
3.5
I really struggled towards the end of the book - especially the CRISPR chapter. I loved the beginning, then was obsessed with the chapters discussing real life uses and examples but found it confusing and disappointing to then jump back into history again
I really struggled towards the end of the book - especially the CRISPR chapter. I loved the beginning, then was obsessed with the chapters discussing real life uses and examples but found it confusing and disappointing to then jump back into history again
February 4, 2025
Never thought a non-fiction popular science book I read for preparation of my dissertation would be as engaging as this. I thought I’d lost interest in reading after forcing myself to sit through hundreds of pages of fiction, but this particular book reminded me how fun reading could be. Interesting from the first page, helped me so much to understand the history, sacrifice behind what I’m actually doing in the lab when I started off “hunting for phages” on autopilot.
August 16, 2025
The Wild Story Behind “Good Viruses”
This book was written to introduce the general public to the world of phages, which are essentially viruses that can kill bacteria and other viruses. While some phages can cause serious diseases, such as the one responsible for making cholera so deadly, many others enable doctors to cure persistent and stubborn infections. In a world where antibiotic-resistant infections are becoming more common, phages represent an important possible medical treatment that has the potential to save hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives in the coming decades.
However, this is where the story takes a dramatic twist, because during much of the 20th century, phages found their greatest use inside the Soviet Union, which caused them to become associated with Russia’s tyrannical and inhumane Communist regime. This proved most unfortunate, but there are indications that interest in phages and how they can be used to help treat a host of diseases and infections is increasing around the world.
I definitely recommend this book to those who want to know more about these remarkable organisms, and to learn more about the promise they hold for fighting diseases now and in the future.
This book was written to introduce the general public to the world of phages, which are essentially viruses that can kill bacteria and other viruses. While some phages can cause serious diseases, such as the one responsible for making cholera so deadly, many others enable doctors to cure persistent and stubborn infections. In a world where antibiotic-resistant infections are becoming more common, phages represent an important possible medical treatment that has the potential to save hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives in the coming decades.
However, this is where the story takes a dramatic twist, because during much of the 20th century, phages found their greatest use inside the Soviet Union, which caused them to become associated with Russia’s tyrannical and inhumane Communist regime. This proved most unfortunate, but there are indications that interest in phages and how they can be used to help treat a host of diseases and infections is increasing around the world.
I definitely recommend this book to those who want to know more about these remarkable organisms, and to learn more about the promise they hold for fighting diseases now and in the future.
September 15, 2024
Accessible, interesting. Sometimes the organization was a little shaky, but so it must go with a book that combines the history, mechanisms, speculation and promises of various overlapping scientific discoveries.
September 10, 2025
I really love books like this. I already knew quite a lot about phages, bacteria and such with my degree in biochemistry, but I love learning about the history and the scientific development of subjects like this one.
December 18, 2023
Jättekul med bok om phages, bra skriven osv. Inte för många faktafel men en skam att han inte ger Franklin mer cred. Hursom en 5a för de historiska delarna va dunder och d e phages.
September 10, 2025
This book was everything I was hoping for! My interest in phages was piqued when I read The Perfect Predator. This book went into so much detail about how phages work and why they sometimes don't, and about the massive difficulty in getting them to the general public. Really fascinating. Highly recommend.
December 2, 2025
Kinda blew my mind. 100+ year history on bacteriophages, with a large focus on former Soviet countries and scientists with Big Personalities. Featuring CRISPR, antibiotic resistance, citizen science, and the limitations of Western medicine/pharmaceutical studies. What a cool book.
August 21, 2025
3 sentence synopsis: This book begins with one of my favorite fun facts: phages (viruses that infect bacteria) are by far the most abundant organisms on earth. While viruses are usually perceived as harmful to humans and animals, phages are largely “good” in that they regulate the carbon cycle and can be used to kill pathogenic bacteria harming humans. In a blend of history, Soviet era intrigue, surprising science, and elegant therapeutic ingenuity, The Good Virus lives up to its moniker.
If y’all are surprised that I loved a nonfiction book about viruses, then you must be new here.
This book was fantastic! It contained the perfect blend of history, science, personal intrigue, and disease. Admittedly, I know more about viruses than your average person, and I still learned a lot. Phages are fascinating. Sometimes I like to stop and marvel at the plethora and diversity of phages in the world. As someone who has spent their career focused on human viruses, it’s beneficial to remove my anthropocentric view and pontificate on the mighty phage.
My favorite part of The Good Virus was the rich history of phage discovery and research. I had no idea that Georgia (the country) is one of the key players. It was also sobering to realize how phage therapy as an alternative to antibiotics was so close to being widely implemented only to be thwarted by war and by Soviet era attacks on science and scientists. We should take this as a warning–defunding science and firing scientists based on political ideologies will result in loss of technology, loss of life, and put progress back decades.
If y’all are surprised that I loved a nonfiction book about viruses, then you must be new here.
This book was fantastic! It contained the perfect blend of history, science, personal intrigue, and disease. Admittedly, I know more about viruses than your average person, and I still learned a lot. Phages are fascinating. Sometimes I like to stop and marvel at the plethora and diversity of phages in the world. As someone who has spent their career focused on human viruses, it’s beneficial to remove my anthropocentric view and pontificate on the mighty phage.
My favorite part of The Good Virus was the rich history of phage discovery and research. I had no idea that Georgia (the country) is one of the key players. It was also sobering to realize how phage therapy as an alternative to antibiotics was so close to being widely implemented only to be thwarted by war and by Soviet era attacks on science and scientists. We should take this as a warning–defunding science and firing scientists based on political ideologies will result in loss of technology, loss of life, and put progress back decades.
August 19, 2023
"At every moment, within your body and all around you, trillions of microscopic combatants are fighting an invisible war. Countless times per second, 'good' viruses known as phages are infecting and destroying bacteria. These phages are the most abundant life form on the planet" (source) and have the potential to be used as treatments for disease-causing bacteria. They can also empower bacteria with new ways of causing harm, transferring traits like toxin-production or antibiotic resistance between bacteria. And they can serve a more neutral purpose as a balanced part of a well-functioning ecosystem, in the ocean or in our guts.
This book had a lot of strengths in common with another new release I reviews - Blight, on the biology of fungus. Both are about organisms that we may not think about much, but which are ubiquitous in our environment and have the potential to influence human health. The authors in both cases do a great job of showing why people should care about these stories. They both also tell really engaging stories about the people doing the science. That was even more true in this book because people and politics have determined whether phage-based medicine is embraced or shunned.
I liked this book even better than Blight though, largely because of how fascinating I found the world of phages. It's amazing to me that these tiny viruses can influence the carbon cycle or determine whether bacteria can cause disease. I also found peering into their tiny world to be an awe-inspiring delight. The fact that phages are infected by viruses and that a predator of phages has recently been discovered makes them feel like a miniature version of the animals we can more easily observed. Although treatment with phages is currently a huge undertaking, restricted to one-off individual cases with anecdotal results, these cases were also incredible to read about. In particular, this book summarizes the story from The Perfect Predator, in which author and scientist Steffanie Strathdee tried to get her husband access to phage treatment. Definitely a book I'd like to read next!This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey
This book had a lot of strengths in common with another new release I reviews - Blight, on the biology of fungus. Both are about organisms that we may not think about much, but which are ubiquitous in our environment and have the potential to influence human health. The authors in both cases do a great job of showing why people should care about these stories. They both also tell really engaging stories about the people doing the science. That was even more true in this book because people and politics have determined whether phage-based medicine is embraced or shunned.
I liked this book even better than Blight though, largely because of how fascinating I found the world of phages. It's amazing to me that these tiny viruses can influence the carbon cycle or determine whether bacteria can cause disease. I also found peering into their tiny world to be an awe-inspiring delight. The fact that phages are infected by viruses and that a predator of phages has recently been discovered makes them feel like a miniature version of the animals we can more easily observed. Although treatment with phages is currently a huge undertaking, restricted to one-off individual cases with anecdotal results, these cases were also incredible to read about. In particular, this book summarizes the story from The Perfect Predator, in which author and scientist Steffanie Strathdee tried to get her husband access to phage treatment. Definitely a book I'd like to read next!This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey
June 10, 2025
Really more like 4.5 stars.
The author has seriously drunk the phage Kool-Aid. But he totally admits it and seems to be enjoying himself.
Phages are a kind of virus, the kind that attack bacteria---usually a particular brand/species of bacteria. A lot of the book is about how one might use this fact to cure diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And there are plenty of anecdotes of people with particularly nasty infections being cured.
But it is difficult to, say, conduct the double-blind tests required to allow such therapies to be approved in first-world countries. After all, the point is to attack a very specific kind of bacteria, and they will keep evolving; a big part of the point of phage therapy is that the phages will evolve along with the bacteria. And that messes up the experiment. He doesn’t really offer a solution to this problem. Possibly because there is no good solution (without allowing for a COMPLETELY different kind of trial, and I wish he would have discussed that kind of possibility more).
There’s lots of history of phage science, too. And what feels a little like a chapter on CRISPR shoved in, just because it’s a sexy topic. I mean, sure, phages and CRISPR are pretty intimately related. It just felt like it messed up the flow of the book. But the writing is good, and if my biggest complaint is the order of the chapters? Yeah, I’ll take that.
The author has seriously drunk the phage Kool-Aid. But he totally admits it and seems to be enjoying himself.
Phages are a kind of virus, the kind that attack bacteria---usually a particular brand/species of bacteria. A lot of the book is about how one might use this fact to cure diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And there are plenty of anecdotes of people with particularly nasty infections being cured.
But it is difficult to, say, conduct the double-blind tests required to allow such therapies to be approved in first-world countries. After all, the point is to attack a very specific kind of bacteria, and they will keep evolving; a big part of the point of phage therapy is that the phages will evolve along with the bacteria. And that messes up the experiment. He doesn’t really offer a solution to this problem. Possibly because there is no good solution (without allowing for a COMPLETELY different kind of trial, and I wish he would have discussed that kind of possibility more).
There’s lots of history of phage science, too. And what feels a little like a chapter on CRISPR shoved in, just because it’s a sexy topic. I mean, sure, phages and CRISPR are pretty intimately related. It just felt like it messed up the flow of the book. But the writing is good, and if my biggest complaint is the order of the chapters? Yeah, I’ll take that.
June 28, 2025
3.5 ‼️
James Watson slander always appreciated. Fuck. That. Guy :)
More and more often I find myself able to just naturally ‘follow along’ with whatever a biology-oriented science writer says without having to pause to think or google terms, or even to look up the names of characters mentioned … is this … Understanding? with a capital U? in the Lockean sense of the word? the century-spanning light and warmth Einstein called Understanding? the faculty of mind which Kant argued provides a conceptual framework for organising sensory experience? the fruits on the branches of a priori knowledge which grew from the seeds of a posteriori knowledge? the tool which allows philosophers of all ilks to make predictions about the behaviour of the Universe? it is the human quality that gives colour to the quote, “What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?”
I SPENT 15 MINUTES WRITING THAT I DON’T WANT TO PRE-READ ANATOMY FUCK UNDERSTANDING I WANT TO DOOMSCROLL AND DEEP FRY MY NEURONAL BODIES WHY CAN’T I SPEND MY ENTIRE SUMMER READING AND WATCHING MOVIES AND BIRD WATCHING WHY DO I HAVE TO BE AN ADULT
James Watson slander always appreciated. Fuck. That. Guy :)
More and more often I find myself able to just naturally ‘follow along’ with whatever a biology-oriented science writer says without having to pause to think or google terms, or even to look up the names of characters mentioned … is this … Understanding? with a capital U? in the Lockean sense of the word? the century-spanning light and warmth Einstein called Understanding? the faculty of mind which Kant argued provides a conceptual framework for organising sensory experience? the fruits on the branches of a priori knowledge which grew from the seeds of a posteriori knowledge? the tool which allows philosophers of all ilks to make predictions about the behaviour of the Universe? it is the human quality that gives colour to the quote, “What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?”
I SPENT 15 MINUTES WRITING THAT I DON’T WANT TO PRE-READ ANATOMY FUCK UNDERSTANDING I WANT TO DOOMSCROLL AND DEEP FRY MY NEURONAL BODIES WHY CAN’T I SPEND MY ENTIRE SUMMER READING AND WATCHING MOVIES AND BIRD WATCHING WHY DO I HAVE TO BE AN ADULT
February 21, 2024
This was a very illuminating book. It talks about the discovery of the bacteriaphage. And tales of the rivalry between Twort and d’Herelle - two fascinating figures in the early history of phage science. There are various stories of cures, effected by the application of bacteriaphages in some cases to open wounds in some cases consumed orally. However, the book stresses the difficulties in creating reliable phage therapies.
There’s also a wonderful survey of other uses of bacteria phages. The development of crisper technology. CRISPR. And now I understand better what that is.
In fact, there’s a whole lot of things that I understand a whole lot better. It talks about how you can search for phages and you can send liquids to this lab in England and maybe other labs and they’ll determine whether you have found a useful phage, that might be effective against antibiotic resistant bacteria. And if you find one, they’ll let you name it. The book does go on a little bit too long and some things get repeated, but it is so filled with fascinating information that I recommend it to everybody
Now it’s got me thinking about writing my own book and my book would also be about a new frontier of healing Human healing. I mean just as this phage technology or medicine has encountered a great deal of resistance and misunderstanding, I believe that energetic medicine, which goes beyond phage healing in terms of its precision. In other words, the phage is a micro, micro, nano particle, but ultimately energetic healing is the most fine level of healing imaginable.
It offers the possibility of therapies that have absolutely no negative side effects. And that’s really unheard of in the medical world.
This book tells the story of the use of phages in the siege of Stalingrad, and it talks a bit about the Soviet Union and Stalin‘s Medicine is even one chapter. There’s a great discussion about how people have tried to bring therapy into reality. And there’s a discussion of what role phages can play going forward. There’s actually a field guide to the phages at the end that has either sketches or electron micrographs.
This is not a great review. I hope I get better at this, but I very much like the idea of memorializing some of my thoughts on each book that I read. So thank you Goodreads. And thank you Jina for turning me onto this. And from now on when I read a book, I’m going to write a review and my reviews are going to get better and better. In fact, it makes sense to be taking notes, and basically writing the review as I go along.
And maybe I’ll just stop there.
There’s also a wonderful survey of other uses of bacteria phages. The development of crisper technology. CRISPR. And now I understand better what that is.
In fact, there’s a whole lot of things that I understand a whole lot better. It talks about how you can search for phages and you can send liquids to this lab in England and maybe other labs and they’ll determine whether you have found a useful phage, that might be effective against antibiotic resistant bacteria. And if you find one, they’ll let you name it. The book does go on a little bit too long and some things get repeated, but it is so filled with fascinating information that I recommend it to everybody
Now it’s got me thinking about writing my own book and my book would also be about a new frontier of healing Human healing. I mean just as this phage technology or medicine has encountered a great deal of resistance and misunderstanding, I believe that energetic medicine, which goes beyond phage healing in terms of its precision. In other words, the phage is a micro, micro, nano particle, but ultimately energetic healing is the most fine level of healing imaginable.
It offers the possibility of therapies that have absolutely no negative side effects. And that’s really unheard of in the medical world.
This book tells the story of the use of phages in the siege of Stalingrad, and it talks a bit about the Soviet Union and Stalin‘s Medicine is even one chapter. There’s a great discussion about how people have tried to bring therapy into reality. And there’s a discussion of what role phages can play going forward. There’s actually a field guide to the phages at the end that has either sketches or electron micrographs.
This is not a great review. I hope I get better at this, but I very much like the idea of memorializing some of my thoughts on each book that I read. So thank you Goodreads. And thank you Jina for turning me onto this. And from now on when I read a book, I’m going to write a review and my reviews are going to get better and better. In fact, it makes sense to be taking notes, and basically writing the review as I go along.
And maybe I’ll just stop there.
February 3, 2024
context: biology/chemistry undergrad here who works in the life science industry.
i loved learning about the history, future, and wide range of applications for phage technology. it's actually something that my biology education did cover briefly, but i kept waiting for the author to talk about the potential dangers of this tech (and how we should handle them) and it just never happened. there may have been a few paragraphs that were less than positive about phages, but having that little criticism made the book feel one-sided with hype and overly optimistic. it also painted the scientists against phage tech as being stodgy and "rah rah technology is bad" rather than pointing out what their criticisms were because maybe they were valid? yes, scientists of the past have rejected objectively correct science because they were pro-status quo, but even Ireland admits that this tech is controversial and just doesn't seem to touch on why.
just off the top of my head: what if a medicinal bacteriophage mutates and becomes hostile to native, helpful bacteria in humans? how do we prevent something like this from happening and what do we do if it does? how do we prevent bio-terrorism? a lot of the controversies of bio-engineering apply to the context of phage being released into the environment -- how can we be sure of our impact on a large-scale, how do we abort if something goes wrong, etc. for phage-derived CRISPR tech - that's a whole other can of worms, especially ethically.
this book does wonders in educating the public in an accessible and down-to-earth way about what phages are and what they can be used for, but it feels unfair not to present the other side of the argument and why the science community might be reticent about its use. the book is well researched and covers almost everything that a formal biology education does about phages. i learned lots of new things and am excited to see how the tech progresses.
i loved learning about the history, future, and wide range of applications for phage technology. it's actually something that my biology education did cover briefly, but i kept waiting for the author to talk about the potential dangers of this tech (and how we should handle them) and it just never happened. there may have been a few paragraphs that were less than positive about phages, but having that little criticism made the book feel one-sided with hype and overly optimistic. it also painted the scientists against phage tech as being stodgy and "rah rah technology is bad" rather than pointing out what their criticisms were because maybe they were valid? yes, scientists of the past have rejected objectively correct science because they were pro-status quo, but even Ireland admits that this tech is controversial and just doesn't seem to touch on why.
just off the top of my head: what if a medicinal bacteriophage mutates and becomes hostile to native, helpful bacteria in humans? how do we prevent something like this from happening and what do we do if it does? how do we prevent bio-terrorism? a lot of the controversies of bio-engineering apply to the context of phage being released into the environment -- how can we be sure of our impact on a large-scale, how do we abort if something goes wrong, etc. for phage-derived CRISPR tech - that's a whole other can of worms, especially ethically.
this book does wonders in educating the public in an accessible and down-to-earth way about what phages are and what they can be used for, but it feels unfair not to present the other side of the argument and why the science community might be reticent about its use. the book is well researched and covers almost everything that a formal biology education does about phages. i learned lots of new things and am excited to see how the tech progresses.
December 17, 2023
Most people have never heard of bacteriophages, which is rather surprising considering they are the most common and diverse entities on the planet. They can be found anywhere and everywhere that bacteria or archaea occur — soil, air, and water. For example, every teaspoon of seawater contains millions upon millions of different bacteriophages. “[S]maller than the wavelength of light itself,” bacteriophages replicate themselves by targeting and invading a bacterial cell, copying itself madly, with its components spontaneously self-assembling new particles and then exiting — often explosively — often killing its bacterial host cell in the process.
Our discovery of phages (as they’re often called) is relatively recent. At the end of the 1800s, scientists discovered that when they filtered liquids to remove all bacteria, these filtered liquids destroyed bacterial cultures. Why? What was the cause? The researchers proposed that the filtered fluid contained entities that were “too small to see with a light microscope.”
Soon, scientists adopted the use of these filtered liquids as antibacterial therapeutics, especially in the former Soviet Union, throughout Central Europe, and in France, until they were later displaced by the discovery of antibiotics in the 1930s.
“For a few decades in the early twentieth century, the world went mad for phages, and phage therapy was everywhere,” according to the author, science writer, Tom Ireland.
Even today, due to the expense of producing antibiotics, “phage therapy” still persists in the Polish city of Wroclaw, in parts of Russia, and especially in Georgia, as it has for many decades.
However, phage therapy does not always work because these entities are tricky. Some are only weakly infectious; others are “hyper-specific, targeting only particular strains.” The technology itself is primitive, governments are lax about preclinical testing, and pharmaceutical companies cannot patent phages so they remain uninterested. Further, identifying or designing a phage to attack a specific bacterial strain is challenging, expensive, and often time-consuming — and time is not something that a person who is deathly ill has much of. Nonetheless, there have been some dramatic cures.
Meanwhile, the widespread abuse of antibiotics by agriculture and medicine has driven the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, some of which have evolved into monsters that are virtually unstoppable today by any means. This frightening reality is reawakening modern medicine’s dormant interest in phage therapies.
In this provocative and superbly written book, The Good Virus: The Untold Story of Phages: The Most Abundant Life Forms on Earth and What They Can Do For Us (W. W. Norton & Company / Hodder Press, 2023), author Tom Ireland guides us through the circuitous history of bacteriophages, from the first formal description published in the scientific literature to their role in a number of Nobel Prizes, such as the discovery of DNA and their recent contribution to cutting edge technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 — a bacterial immune system that evolved to block phage infection or replication within host cells.
This informative book is crammed with engaging stories of brilliant and eccentric scientists at the forefront of phage research who are discovering and working to understand the potential uses of phages. We learn why the Soviet Union embraced phages to fight disease, so they were recognized as the world’s first genuine antibiotic years before penicillin was discovered. We read that even today, in some isolated areas of the former Soviet Union, drinking a vial of phages to cure what ails you is as common as taking an over-the-counter drug.
Although phages are not a panacea, and the author takes pains to tell his readers this, he does describe some astonishing medical case histories and miracle cures to illustrate the promise of phage therapies when they are carefully matched to combat specific bacterial pathogens. Notably, the author summarizes the story from The Perfect Predator, a book written by epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee about the arduous process of obtaining access to phage treatment for her husband after he had been infected with Acinetobacter baumannii, known as “the worst bacteria on the planet” according to the World Health Organization.
Phages have important roles outside of medical settings, too. We learn, for example, how scientists only recently discovered the critically important role of phages to all ecosystems on Earth, from sharing genes necessary to produce oxygen, or that influence the carbon cycle, or that encode toxins that bacteria can use to cause disease.
One of the best books of any genre that I’ve read in 2023, this superbly written book relies on exquisite story-telling to interweave science history, and politics into an engaging and readable account that will fascinate absolutely everyone. Whether you are looking for something unique to enthrall your book club friends, something educational to enlighten or inspire future phage hunters, supplemental reading for your university microbiology or ecology students, or are seeking insights into the complex and subtle ways that politics, history, medicine, science, and individual personalities all feedback on and influence each other, you will find it in this remarkable and extraordinarily readable book. Even scientists and medical doctors will find much in this book to intrigue and delight them, and non-specialists will find this eye-opening book unlike anything they’ve ever read before.
NOTE: Originally published by Forbes on 11 September 2023.
Our discovery of phages (as they’re often called) is relatively recent. At the end of the 1800s, scientists discovered that when they filtered liquids to remove all bacteria, these filtered liquids destroyed bacterial cultures. Why? What was the cause? The researchers proposed that the filtered fluid contained entities that were “too small to see with a light microscope.”
Soon, scientists adopted the use of these filtered liquids as antibacterial therapeutics, especially in the former Soviet Union, throughout Central Europe, and in France, until they were later displaced by the discovery of antibiotics in the 1930s.
“For a few decades in the early twentieth century, the world went mad for phages, and phage therapy was everywhere,” according to the author, science writer, Tom Ireland.
Even today, due to the expense of producing antibiotics, “phage therapy” still persists in the Polish city of Wroclaw, in parts of Russia, and especially in Georgia, as it has for many decades.
However, phage therapy does not always work because these entities are tricky. Some are only weakly infectious; others are “hyper-specific, targeting only particular strains.” The technology itself is primitive, governments are lax about preclinical testing, and pharmaceutical companies cannot patent phages so they remain uninterested. Further, identifying or designing a phage to attack a specific bacterial strain is challenging, expensive, and often time-consuming — and time is not something that a person who is deathly ill has much of. Nonetheless, there have been some dramatic cures.
Meanwhile, the widespread abuse of antibiotics by agriculture and medicine has driven the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, some of which have evolved into monsters that are virtually unstoppable today by any means. This frightening reality is reawakening modern medicine’s dormant interest in phage therapies.
In this provocative and superbly written book, The Good Virus: The Untold Story of Phages: The Most Abundant Life Forms on Earth and What They Can Do For Us (W. W. Norton & Company / Hodder Press, 2023), author Tom Ireland guides us through the circuitous history of bacteriophages, from the first formal description published in the scientific literature to their role in a number of Nobel Prizes, such as the discovery of DNA and their recent contribution to cutting edge technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 — a bacterial immune system that evolved to block phage infection or replication within host cells.
This informative book is crammed with engaging stories of brilliant and eccentric scientists at the forefront of phage research who are discovering and working to understand the potential uses of phages. We learn why the Soviet Union embraced phages to fight disease, so they were recognized as the world’s first genuine antibiotic years before penicillin was discovered. We read that even today, in some isolated areas of the former Soviet Union, drinking a vial of phages to cure what ails you is as common as taking an over-the-counter drug.
Although phages are not a panacea, and the author takes pains to tell his readers this, he does describe some astonishing medical case histories and miracle cures to illustrate the promise of phage therapies when they are carefully matched to combat specific bacterial pathogens. Notably, the author summarizes the story from The Perfect Predator, a book written by epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee about the arduous process of obtaining access to phage treatment for her husband after he had been infected with Acinetobacter baumannii, known as “the worst bacteria on the planet” according to the World Health Organization.
Phages have important roles outside of medical settings, too. We learn, for example, how scientists only recently discovered the critically important role of phages to all ecosystems on Earth, from sharing genes necessary to produce oxygen, or that influence the carbon cycle, or that encode toxins that bacteria can use to cause disease.
One of the best books of any genre that I’ve read in 2023, this superbly written book relies on exquisite story-telling to interweave science history, and politics into an engaging and readable account that will fascinate absolutely everyone. Whether you are looking for something unique to enthrall your book club friends, something educational to enlighten or inspire future phage hunters, supplemental reading for your university microbiology or ecology students, or are seeking insights into the complex and subtle ways that politics, history, medicine, science, and individual personalities all feedback on and influence each other, you will find it in this remarkable and extraordinarily readable book. Even scientists and medical doctors will find much in this book to intrigue and delight them, and non-specialists will find this eye-opening book unlike anything they’ve ever read before.
NOTE: Originally published by Forbes on 11 September 2023.
April 7, 2025
I knew next to nothing about phages (bacteriophages) before reading this book and it's likely I won't retain 99% of what I just finished reading, but it is an important and fascinating topic delivered in an absorbing, easily digestible package. The anecdotes about phage scientists' discoveries and the decrepit former-Soviet facility in Georgia where patients desperately fighting infections by antibiotic-resistant bacteria appear to have been cured by phages are what propel the book along. As one might expect, it lags a bit when it comes to discussions of how phage-based treatments might -- if allowed by regulators -- become a useful bulwark against the rapid decline in the efficacy of antibiotics, which are now cost-prohibitive for pharma to bother trying to create.
July 9, 2024
I am enthralled! I love microbiology. All hail the bacteriophage!
April 9, 2024
An interesting book about a particular type of viruses, bacteriophages. These viruses have very little interest in humans but infect and destroy bacteria, including some that are resistant to antibiotics (hence the “good virus”, as opposed to, say, SARS-COV2 or HIV).
It seemed to me that the author wanted to get two messages across in the book. In the first half he talks about the history of “phage therapy”, the harnessing of the power of phages to treat infections. Starting in the 1920s, so decades before the antibiotic era, genetic engineering or the electron microscope, a group in France pioneered the use of phages for a variety of infections, with some success. Stalinist Russia adopted the technique and an institute in Georgia (the country, not the state) became the trailblazer. Apparently vials of phages were used as a sort of battlefield antibiotic as late as the war in Afghanistan.
The impenetrability of the Iron Curtain and the lack of well-controlled efficacy studies led to ignorance, distrust and dislike in the Western medical world vis-à-vis phage therapy, even as the extent and impact of antibiotic resistance became clear. Science writers love a good story about an underdog, and phage therapy and its adherents certainly qualify, or qualified, as things are beginning to change.
I found this very interesting, even as I felt that the author should heed the advice that “the plural of anecdote is not data” and that he did downplay the hurdles towards a broader application of phage therapy. These include: intellectual property issues (can a virus be patented?), quality control (you don’t want toxic pieces of bacteria floating around in your phage solution), genetic instability (viruses can introduce antibiotic resistance or virulence genes into bacteria) and the need for a strict match between virus and bacteria (most phages infect only certain strains of bacteria). Regulatory agencies don’t seem to know too well how to consider and regulate phage therapy. In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration seems to allow emergency use of phages in serious infections, on a strictly individual patient basis. Belgium considers phage therapy as “magistral preparation”, that is: a prescription from a physician for an individually prepared concoction for a specific patient – a clever by-passing of the need to jump through the usual regulatory hoops. And there is always medical tourism: patients can go to the institute in Georgia to be treated.
The second part, and the second message of the book, can be summarized as : there are a whole lot more viruses than people thought, and they are everywhere. In soil. In rivers. In the ocean. Raining down on mountaintops. On the surfaces of space craft that we send into the wide unknown. This was not a topic I had ever thought much about, and I found it interesting reading, especially the parts about efforts to create crowd-sourced virus banks.
The book was easy to read and does not require specialized knowledge. There are a couple of irritating mistakes, such as the confusion between “mucus” (a noun) and “mucous” (an adjective) or the misspelling of the name of a Dutch patient. The illustrations at the back of the book are not the best – surely there must be less fuzzy and more beautiful electron micrographs out there? But all in all a worthwhile read.
It seemed to me that the author wanted to get two messages across in the book. In the first half he talks about the history of “phage therapy”, the harnessing of the power of phages to treat infections. Starting in the 1920s, so decades before the antibiotic era, genetic engineering or the electron microscope, a group in France pioneered the use of phages for a variety of infections, with some success. Stalinist Russia adopted the technique and an institute in Georgia (the country, not the state) became the trailblazer. Apparently vials of phages were used as a sort of battlefield antibiotic as late as the war in Afghanistan.
The impenetrability of the Iron Curtain and the lack of well-controlled efficacy studies led to ignorance, distrust and dislike in the Western medical world vis-à-vis phage therapy, even as the extent and impact of antibiotic resistance became clear. Science writers love a good story about an underdog, and phage therapy and its adherents certainly qualify, or qualified, as things are beginning to change.
I found this very interesting, even as I felt that the author should heed the advice that “the plural of anecdote is not data” and that he did downplay the hurdles towards a broader application of phage therapy. These include: intellectual property issues (can a virus be patented?), quality control (you don’t want toxic pieces of bacteria floating around in your phage solution), genetic instability (viruses can introduce antibiotic resistance or virulence genes into bacteria) and the need for a strict match between virus and bacteria (most phages infect only certain strains of bacteria). Regulatory agencies don’t seem to know too well how to consider and regulate phage therapy. In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration seems to allow emergency use of phages in serious infections, on a strictly individual patient basis. Belgium considers phage therapy as “magistral preparation”, that is: a prescription from a physician for an individually prepared concoction for a specific patient – a clever by-passing of the need to jump through the usual regulatory hoops. And there is always medical tourism: patients can go to the institute in Georgia to be treated.
The second part, and the second message of the book, can be summarized as : there are a whole lot more viruses than people thought, and they are everywhere. In soil. In rivers. In the ocean. Raining down on mountaintops. On the surfaces of space craft that we send into the wide unknown. This was not a topic I had ever thought much about, and I found it interesting reading, especially the parts about efforts to create crowd-sourced virus banks.
The book was easy to read and does not require specialized knowledge. There are a couple of irritating mistakes, such as the confusion between “mucus” (a noun) and “mucous” (an adjective) or the misspelling of the name of a Dutch patient. The illustrations at the back of the book are not the best – surely there must be less fuzzy and more beautiful electron micrographs out there? But all in all a worthwhile read.
February 2, 2025
It speaks to me on so many levels. If you told me I would feel such anticipation, excitement, dismay, and passion about viruses, more specifically bacteriophages, I would have laughed at you.
Yet, here I am having felt all those things while reading Ireland's book. It feels like Ireland wrote this book just for me: a humanities teacher with a love of all things science but a very emerging understanding of all things cellular. He makes a complex world accessible, touchable, and salient for the lay reader. I left reading the book understanding for the first time how we all may have evolved from our planets primordial soup. I also understand horizontal gene transfer and the role it plays in humanities need to take the time needed to deeply understand the role bacteriophages may play in saving us from infections in a post antibiotic resistant world.
He begins by reflecting on how the western world came to recognize the existence of viruses/bacteriophages. This history is filled with tension, intrigue, and upset. It's really rather remarkable. What hit me hardest was the role ego and politics played and continues to play in limiting and restraining our understanding of viruses and the work they do.
The history's narrative is layered with explanations of what early scientists were seeing and why the recognition of phages was so challenging prior to electron microscopes.
As I write this, I am holding back my desire to talk about the WHOLE book. I will stop here with these final thoughts. Last months political shifts have been terrifying to witness. The thought of a anti-vaxxer being at the head of the CDC and FDC makes my stomach turn. The ousting of trusted, judicious individuals in important oversite roles, and their replacement with Trump's cronies and henchmen is equally disturbing. It is hard for me to find a light considering the current state of our nation; yet, this book flooded me with hope and light. The winding road of sciences understanding is fraught with horror (like top scientists being murdered in Nazi death camps). Despite all of the ugly that our species brings to the planet there is this whole other world playing out. It is microscopic, albeit, extraordinarily powerful. It is indifferent to politics, race, money, or power. It has existed long before human ancestors tipped toed through Earth's ancient forests.
I don't know why, but this reality centers me. It helps me see that there are bigger things in our world playing our than Trump, Vance, or Kennedy. We humans may very well end up doing ourselves in with our greed, willful ignorance, and hunger for power. In the end, life will and does move forward. It is far more complex, colorful, powerful, and tenacious than I believe we can even begin to imagine. It has the potential to save and elevate our species, just as it has the potential to destroy us. It is my heart's desire that every human could learn more about this microscopic world... and Ireland makes that possible.
Read this book!!!
Yet, here I am having felt all those things while reading Ireland's book. It feels like Ireland wrote this book just for me: a humanities teacher with a love of all things science but a very emerging understanding of all things cellular. He makes a complex world accessible, touchable, and salient for the lay reader. I left reading the book understanding for the first time how we all may have evolved from our planets primordial soup. I also understand horizontal gene transfer and the role it plays in humanities need to take the time needed to deeply understand the role bacteriophages may play in saving us from infections in a post antibiotic resistant world.
He begins by reflecting on how the western world came to recognize the existence of viruses/bacteriophages. This history is filled with tension, intrigue, and upset. It's really rather remarkable. What hit me hardest was the role ego and politics played and continues to play in limiting and restraining our understanding of viruses and the work they do.
The history's narrative is layered with explanations of what early scientists were seeing and why the recognition of phages was so challenging prior to electron microscopes.
As I write this, I am holding back my desire to talk about the WHOLE book. I will stop here with these final thoughts. Last months political shifts have been terrifying to witness. The thought of a anti-vaxxer being at the head of the CDC and FDC makes my stomach turn. The ousting of trusted, judicious individuals in important oversite roles, and their replacement with Trump's cronies and henchmen is equally disturbing. It is hard for me to find a light considering the current state of our nation; yet, this book flooded me with hope and light. The winding road of sciences understanding is fraught with horror (like top scientists being murdered in Nazi death camps). Despite all of the ugly that our species brings to the planet there is this whole other world playing out. It is microscopic, albeit, extraordinarily powerful. It is indifferent to politics, race, money, or power. It has existed long before human ancestors tipped toed through Earth's ancient forests.
I don't know why, but this reality centers me. It helps me see that there are bigger things in our world playing our than Trump, Vance, or Kennedy. We humans may very well end up doing ourselves in with our greed, willful ignorance, and hunger for power. In the end, life will and does move forward. It is far more complex, colorful, powerful, and tenacious than I believe we can even begin to imagine. It has the potential to save and elevate our species, just as it has the potential to destroy us. It is my heart's desire that every human could learn more about this microscopic world... and Ireland makes that possible.
Read this book!!!
December 15, 2025
I loved this book so much!!! I first started reading a while ago but lost my momentum due to extra academic work and other things that took up my time. Then I had my Thanksgiving break so I decided I needed to finish it-- it was so worth it.
In particular for me, having worked in a lab last year that dealt with phages, I knew firsthand the difficulties and complexities of phage research. However, there was a whole world that I was unfamiliar with because my mentor never mentioned it. While we were using phages as a vector gene therapy, the book talked about phages by themselves, simply as viruses. It was the real, natural form of bacteriophages, and everything I learned was fascinating and made me want to learn more about it.
Firstly, I liked the set up of the book, where it became a storyline/narrative that followed a historical chronological order. Starting with d'Herelle, then the Soviets, then some parts of America-- while at times there were so many characters that I was a little confused about who did what, for the most part it was super easy to follow and connect back in time. I think that creating a narrative, especially one that reveals some hidden stories that are actually embedded in more well known scientific research (like CRISPR for example), makes the story of phages more compelling and creates more empathy with the reader for these undervalued and understudied viruses.
His arguments were super clear, a little repetitive at times (eg. driving home the point about phages being hard to create standard Western research results for) but it didn't overwhelm me with its redundancy: it seemed that each time he repeated the problems, it was with another layer of complexity, or another failed experiment, or whatever it may be. It was inspirational to see how many scientists throughout the decades have tried, futilely or successfully, to work on something so invisible and often shunned-- your whole life's work could be for nothing, or maybe everything. And it was true passion that drove these scientists to spend their hours in their labs, trying to recreate some specific phage cocktail, or measure exactly what titration they had...it's admirable and exactly how I want to be. No matter what profession- obviously this book was more aligned with my interest in biological lab research, but even if I end up doing something else, I want to act like a character from this book-- unwilling to give up or pursue a more lucrative or popular path simply because my passion wasn't being recognized. But anyways that's getting a little far into my future. As for right now, I think reading these kinds of books just expands the view I have of the world by showing me one tiny niche or corner of the world that I otherwise wouldn't have known about.
Read this book if you have a bit of time and intention to learn something new.
In particular for me, having worked in a lab last year that dealt with phages, I knew firsthand the difficulties and complexities of phage research. However, there was a whole world that I was unfamiliar with because my mentor never mentioned it. While we were using phages as a vector gene therapy, the book talked about phages by themselves, simply as viruses. It was the real, natural form of bacteriophages, and everything I learned was fascinating and made me want to learn more about it.
Firstly, I liked the set up of the book, where it became a storyline/narrative that followed a historical chronological order. Starting with d'Herelle, then the Soviets, then some parts of America-- while at times there were so many characters that I was a little confused about who did what, for the most part it was super easy to follow and connect back in time. I think that creating a narrative, especially one that reveals some hidden stories that are actually embedded in more well known scientific research (like CRISPR for example), makes the story of phages more compelling and creates more empathy with the reader for these undervalued and understudied viruses.
His arguments were super clear, a little repetitive at times (eg. driving home the point about phages being hard to create standard Western research results for) but it didn't overwhelm me with its redundancy: it seemed that each time he repeated the problems, it was with another layer of complexity, or another failed experiment, or whatever it may be. It was inspirational to see how many scientists throughout the decades have tried, futilely or successfully, to work on something so invisible and often shunned-- your whole life's work could be for nothing, or maybe everything. And it was true passion that drove these scientists to spend their hours in their labs, trying to recreate some specific phage cocktail, or measure exactly what titration they had...it's admirable and exactly how I want to be. No matter what profession- obviously this book was more aligned with my interest in biological lab research, but even if I end up doing something else, I want to act like a character from this book-- unwilling to give up or pursue a more lucrative or popular path simply because my passion wasn't being recognized. But anyways that's getting a little far into my future. As for right now, I think reading these kinds of books just expands the view I have of the world by showing me one tiny niche or corner of the world that I otherwise wouldn't have known about.
Read this book if you have a bit of time and intention to learn something new.
October 4, 2023
“The Good Virus” is a popular science book that discusses bacteriophages and their potential to revolutionise our lives, by destroying harmful strains of bacteria that are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. This is increasingly important subject, because the world is not producing new antibiotic solutions.
What do we do if antibiotics no longer work, and we cannot produce new ones?
The thing I most liked about this book was the combination of Tom Ireland’s extensive research and his storytelling. The author went to great lengths to collect his knowledge on phages, and how they are important in our on-going battles against bacterial infections. He traveled around the world to understand the historical development of the great men and women who pioneered bacteriophage therapies, those who kept this belief and practice alive in the Soviet Union countries – especially Georgia – and for those rare scientists in the West who also believe in phages.
On top of this he told the story of phages in a very engaging way.
While the book presented a good case for the positives of phage therapy, I felt it also diminished its risks and effectiveness of this process. On reading The Good Virus, one gets the sense that using phages is a “No brainer” solution to deal with drug resistant bacterial infections, versus something that needs much more investigation.
There are almost certainly reasons why the widespread use of phage therapy has been slow to catch on, and these reasons seem to be downplayed in the book. The reasons for the slow penetration are said to be due to different belief systems between the West and East, and the IP issues with pharmaceutical companies. But is this really the case?
While these different beliefs exist, between an antibiotic vs. phage centred view of treatment in their respective regions, I wonder why big philanthropies like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations aren’t behind this Perhaps the results are not that clear cut as the book suggests? I also think that success would quickly break down differences in beliefs.
That said, I highly recommend The Good Virus. It opened my eyes to a new world and gave hope that science can continue to help Mankind long into the future.
What do we do if antibiotics no longer work, and we cannot produce new ones?
The thing I most liked about this book was the combination of Tom Ireland’s extensive research and his storytelling. The author went to great lengths to collect his knowledge on phages, and how they are important in our on-going battles against bacterial infections. He traveled around the world to understand the historical development of the great men and women who pioneered bacteriophage therapies, those who kept this belief and practice alive in the Soviet Union countries – especially Georgia – and for those rare scientists in the West who also believe in phages.
On top of this he told the story of phages in a very engaging way.
While the book presented a good case for the positives of phage therapy, I felt it also diminished its risks and effectiveness of this process. On reading The Good Virus, one gets the sense that using phages is a “No brainer” solution to deal with drug resistant bacterial infections, versus something that needs much more investigation.
There are almost certainly reasons why the widespread use of phage therapy has been slow to catch on, and these reasons seem to be downplayed in the book. The reasons for the slow penetration are said to be due to different belief systems between the West and East, and the IP issues with pharmaceutical companies. But is this really the case?
While these different beliefs exist, between an antibiotic vs. phage centred view of treatment in their respective regions, I wonder why big philanthropies like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations aren’t behind this Perhaps the results are not that clear cut as the book suggests? I also think that success would quickly break down differences in beliefs.
That said, I highly recommend The Good Virus. It opened my eyes to a new world and gave hope that science can continue to help Mankind long into the future.
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