In 1918, an influenza pandemic ravaged the globe, infecting more than 500 million people and killing more than 50 million. Yet while the virus weakened the afflicted, it was a later bacterial infection in the lungs that was ultimately responsible for most of the deaths. Bacteria existed on the planet 3.5 billion years before us and apparently haven’t quite forgiven us for arriving. As we learn from Muhammad H. Zaman’s timely “Biography of Resistance,” bacteria are devious one-cell organisms whose battles with each other over...

Source: Wall Street Journal April 29, 2020 22:07 UTC