I went through this with antibiotic overuse in the late 1970s. Leah Kohlenberg is a freelance writer and teacher living in Seattle. The modern developed countries have become obsessed with eradicating microorganisms of every kind. We've never been cleaner, and we've never been more freaked out about cleanliness. We could eat off our floors, if the very idea didn't give us a panic attack.
Sanitation is one of the achievements of modern public health.
But there are signs that this very preoccupation with good hygiene is making some of us sick. The hygiene hypothesis suggests that in creating semi-sterile lives, we can have too much of a good thing. Now scientists are inventing dirty therapies that promise to remedy our dangerous cleanliness. Second of two parts.