I love living in the future.

[theweaselking]

MIT produces what appears to be a working broad-spectrum *antiviral*.

It works in trials against the common cold, H1N1 flu, dengue fever, polio, and several others.

"The drug works by targeting a type of RNA produced only in cells that have been infected by viruses. “In theory, it should work against all viruses,” says Todd Rider, a senior staff scientist in Lincoln Laboratory’s Chemical, Biological, and Nanoscale Technologies Group"

Comments

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

No. Fucking. Way.

I love living in the future, too.

[dolston.livejournal.com]

Now that's cool

[hwrnmnbsol.livejournal.com]

Potential downside: some virii are beneficial. Gene vectoring, for instance, uses a virus basically very much like the one for the common cold.

Doesn't make this a bad thing! just a potential complication.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Dude, you said "virii".

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

I'm not seeing this as an issue. We've been working around the fact that some bacteria are beneficial for generations now.

[whitetail.livejournal.com]

This would be a great boon to mankind if people could get it over the counter for the price of a bottle of aspirin, but I strongly suspect that if it's ever made available, it will be prescription-only and cost thousands of dollars per dose. Ordinary people will not be able to afford it, and they will get sick and die just like always.

In any case, I doubt that a curative medicine like this would ever be allowed to see the light of day. The medical establishment doesn't want cures, they want TREATMENTS that generate ongoing income for them over years and decades. That's why this stuff you're talking about will probably never be mass-marketed. If it were, it could be a financial calamity for the drug industry who don't want large numbers of people to be disease-free. The medical establishment actually wants a significant percentage of us to be ill. If people could be cured of all viral diseases easily, they would lose a substantial portion of their customer base. That's why, if this anti-viral is ever made available, be assured, they will charge a king's ransom for it.

[jerril]

You're American, right?

Our medical establishment isn't profit driven. Here, "treatment" is not a commodity, it's an obnoxious cost to be minimized. Cures over "treatments" reduce ongoing government costs, and healthy people work more and thus pay more taxes.

Not everyone's medical system is set up to farm sick people.

[cleodhna.livejournal.com]

Indeed. In fact, if such a drug works and can be manufactured at a reasonable cost so that it could be distributed widely, it would save the health system screeds of cash. The cost of treating someone acutely suffering from some of these things can be absolutely enormous, which is why our government (British) pays for vulnerable people, such as the elderly, people with chronic heart or lung conditions, and people who work in services where they are more likely to be exposed, to be inoculated against flu. They really push the flu jab. And as you say healthy people work more and pay more taxes. The common cold hurts the economy; rampaging stomach bugs cripple businesses; hospitals fill up with people who can't handle a little sniffle. Sure, there are industries profiting, and it's no small profit, but hey... if the makers of Lemsip felt themselves too hard hit, they can always switch to crackpot diet pills. Those never seem to go out of fashion, anal leakage notwithstanding.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

The medical establishment actually wants a significant percentage of us to be ill.

This theory fails to explain the vaccine industry, and ignores the substantial public health efforts made to, for instance, reduce childhood obesity in order to avoid future chronic conditions.

-- Steve will admit that the theory triggers his argumentative reflex, given that it's often used by "complementary and alternative medicine" advocates to decry studies disproving the effectiveness of CAM procedures and thereby peeing in their rice bowls.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

The vaccine industry is paid for by the gov't, and public health efforts are paid for by the gov't, in order to counteract the otherwise-obvious benefits to keeping people sick a lot.

Also, not all doctors fucking suck as human beings and a lot of them will work to save a lot of lives just because.

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

"It works in trials against the common cold"
This is starting to sound like science fiction.

No wait, most sci-fi has people complaining that they still haven't found a cure!