I was intrigued by your question of "Would the cure work"? It's the type of thing I'm willing to handwave in a Doctor Who episode, but I did a little reading (by which I mean twenty minutes of papers):
The characters mention using a virus to kill Praxeus. The class of virus they're referring to are bacteriophages. They're extremely common and have been proposed as a treatment for antibiotic resistant infections. I'd heard of them before but I didn't know a lot about them.
The way bacteriophages work is they replicate within a host bacteria cell, making a bunch of copies, then burst the cell open, then repeat. How effective they are depends on how well they bind to the target bacteria and the rate of replication. In contrast, antibiotics are effective either by how much time they spend bound to the pathogen or the amount used. If you tried dropping Cipro into the ocean, it would be useless because it would be too dilute to do anything. Presumably Suki and Thirteen got these right, and maybe the TARDIS did some further optimization.
Downsides to using bacteriophages: There may not survive in certain environments (e.g., the Indian Ocean), there may be an inhibitor present that affects their ability to replicate, and you run the risk of the virus infecting other organisms, potentially with toxic genes.
In short: dropping a bunch of bacteriophages into the ocean probably wouldn't work IRL, but they stand a better chance of antibiotics.
no subject
The characters mention using a virus to kill Praxeus. The class of virus they're referring to are bacteriophages. They're extremely common and have been proposed as a treatment for antibiotic resistant infections. I'd heard of them before but I didn't know a lot about them.
The way bacteriophages work is they replicate within a host bacteria cell, making a bunch of copies, then burst the cell open, then repeat. How effective they are depends on how well they bind to the target bacteria and the rate of replication. In contrast, antibiotics are effective either by how much time they spend bound to the pathogen or the amount used. If you tried dropping Cipro into the ocean, it would be useless because it would be too dilute to do anything. Presumably Suki and Thirteen got these right, and maybe the TARDIS did some further optimization.
Downsides to using bacteriophages: There may not survive in certain environments (e.g., the Indian Ocean), there may be an inhibitor present that affects their ability to replicate, and you run the risk of the virus infecting other organisms, potentially with toxic genes.
In short: dropping a bunch of bacteriophages into the ocean probably wouldn't work IRL, but they stand a better chance of antibiotics.