By your logic, we'd be better off if we gave patients a cocktail containing small amounts of many different antibiotics. By giving a single antibiotic in a large dose, we are "lifting up a particular part of our field of defenses as salient and particularly worthwhile to defeat". Sounds bad.
Willing to bite the bullet and sign on to this kitchen-sink approach, of offering patients a cocktail containing small amounts of many antibiotics?
The problem I see with the cocktail approach is that a pathogen can gradually evolve defenses against everything simultaneously, in parallel. With a cocktail, every element of the cocktail provides a distinct glide path for a virus to increase its contextual fitness. That also sounds bad! The main way I see this situation improving is if two elements of the cocktail happen to act as a sort of clamp, where any virus which begins to defeat one ends up increasing the effectiveness of the other.
By your logic, we'd be better off if we gave patients a cocktail containing small amounts of many different antibiotics. By giving a single antibiotic in a large dose, we are "lifting up a particular part of our field of defenses as salient and particularly worthwhile to defeat". Sounds bad.
Willing to bite the bullet and sign on to this kitchen-sink approach, of offering patients a cocktail containing small amounts of many antibiotics?
The problem I see with the cocktail approach is that a pathogen can gradually evolve defenses against everything simultaneously, in parallel. With a cocktail, every element of the cocktail provides a distinct glide path for a virus to increase its contextual fitness. That also sounds bad! The main way I see this situation improving is if two elements of the cocktail happen to act as a sort of clamp, where any virus which begins to defeat one ends up increasing the effectiveness of the other.