Phage therapies look great in 2013 for two reasons- we're a lot more aware of antibiotic resistance and thanks to several quantum leaps in molecular biology, we can identify target organisms and custom-culture phages in ways the original developers never dreamed of.
It's also a neat strategy- one course and you not only kill the current infection but have immunity granted by sleeper phages remaining against nasties like MRTB or flesh-eating strep.
The problem is that producers needed to bill it as a vaccine, not strictly as a cure. Vaccines got a huge groundswell of public support from 1930-1970 b/c they reduced scourges like smallpox, polio, and typhoid to mere irriitants. Using viruses to tackle bacterial scourges seemed counter-intuitive but it could have worked.
Now here's the fun part- getting MDs to see it as complementary therapy.
Antibiotics are far easier to use. You don't need a precise identification of infecting organism beyond ruling out viral and fungal or protozoan infections that antibiotics won't touch.
Write a scrip for a broad-spectrum antibiotic and for a couple of bucks,
(barring allergic reaction or kidney/liver damage) patient recovers.
Phages are pretty cheap to make but you gotta be 100% sure you're giving the right phage to kill the strain.
Another cute possibility is all those lysogenic phages hanging around might cause cancer decades down the road or lupus or some other immune problem in some patients.
However, if I've got MRTB or flesh-eating strep and 99% sure I'll be dead in a week, give me phages and I might be able to deal with the sequelae.
LSS- phages needed specificity that wasn't possible 'til ca 2000. I mean you could culture phages that'd go after certain classes of bacteria before, but not be assured they'd be effective.