INTIMATE STRANGERS: UNSEEN LIFE ON EARTH

On September 18, 2008 at the Koshland Science Museum in Washington, D.C., Dr. Stuart Levy, professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts University School of Medicine and Dr. Linda Tollefson, Assistant Commissioner for Science at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, discussed how to optimize antibiotic use and how to minimize the emergence of drug resistant pathogens. In part 2 of this 3 part video series, Dr. Levy discusses how antibiotic resistance develops, the development practices drug companies employ when producing antimicrobials, and how this process may change in the future. Dr. Tollefson outlines how the FDA is encouraging the development of antibiotics in an industry that is mostly focused on manufacturing drugs for chronic illnesses. Dr. Levy is Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts University School of Medicine where he is the Director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance. He directs research on mechanisms of bacterial antibiotic resistance. Stuart Levy is also Staff Physician at the Tufts Medical Center and he also serves as the president of The International Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics. Dr. Tollefson is Assistant Commissioner for Science at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). She previously served as Deputy Director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), where she led CVM's efforts to implement a risk-based approach to address antimicrobial resistance, fulfilling a 2001 Congressional mandate, and was instrumental in the founding of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System for Enteric Bacteria. Tollefson also served as Chief of Epidemiology in the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition where she successfully investigated numerous outbreaks of food borne disease and served as liaison to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Part 3 will be published next week.

Video podcast:	Intimate Strangers: Unseen Life on Earth
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Description:	A video podcast documentary by the American Society for Microbiology explores the microbial world and how life has evolved over Earth's 3.8 billion-year history. Composed of over 42,000 scientists and health professionals, the mission of ASM is to advance the microbial sciences as a vehicle for understanding life processes and to apply and communicate this knowledge for the improvement of health and environmental and economic well-being worldwide. For information about ASM, visit the society on the web at www.asm.org. For more information about the video podcast of Intimate Strangers: Unseen Life on Earth visit www.microbeworld.org.
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