Improved sanitation and antibiotics have led to an epoch-making increase in human life expectancy, but at the same time they have caused new health problems, upsetting the delicate, centuries-old balance that has developed between the microorganisms living inside us and in the environment. As a result, microbial resistance to antibiotics has become one of the most serious medical problems of our time. The book “Germs Good and Bad” is devoted not only to this problem, but also to the so-called “hygiene hypothesis,” according to which the current progressive surge in immune and other diseases is associated with our excessive concern for improving sanitation. microbes went completely wrong, Jessica Snyder Sachs reveals to readers the current understanding of the symbiotic relationship between the human body and the microbes that inhabit it, the number of which, by the way, exceeds the number of our own cells by nine times! In addition, the author of this book gives us hope that in the future people will learn to create and use antibiotics more judiciously, and even that someday we will be able to replace antibacterials and disinfectants with bacterial ones, each of which will be specially formulated so as to provide the best care for our health.