The theory is that most environmental niches will already be maxed out in terms of how much MRSA-like bacteria they can support - if they weren't, the bacteria would just reproduce more.
So say your backyard can support 1e9 bacteria. Of that, 5e8 is antibiotic-resistant bacteria, while 5e8 is regular bacteria. Then you add another 1e9 regular bacteria. Now the backyard is overcapacity, so the 2e9 bacteria will compete for survival until only 1e9 are left. Assuming that the antibiotic-resistant bacteria has no other advantage over regular bacteria, then after the winnowing there will be 2.5e8 antibiotic-resistant and 7.5e8 regular bacteria - a reduction from 50% to 25%. Every subsequent application of the procedure will exponentially decrease the proportion of resistant bacteria.
This would also increase the number of Staphylococcus relative to other bacteria in the ground. And these bacteria can transfer DNA to each other, including resistance genes. So many of your added bacteria would turn into MRSA, and if there is enough antibiotics in the environment to maintain the MRSA prevalence without your intervention, then you just might end up increasing the amount of MRSA in the region.
This thread is intended to provide a space for 'crazy' ideas. Ideas that spontaneously come to mind (and feel great), ideas you long wanted to tell but never found the place and time for and also for ideas you think should be obvious and simple - but nobody ever mentions them.
This thread itself is such an idea. Or rather the tangent of such an idea which I post below as a seed for this thread.
Rules for this thread:
If this should become a regular thread I suggest the following :