Thank you nerds
Sunday, August 14th, 2011Seriously, thank you nerds.
Now, in a development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection.
In a paper published July 27 in the journal PLoS One, the researchers tested their drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them — including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever.
This could be epic; utopian and dystopian in equal amounts. One one hand, never have a cold again. On the other, instructing cells to kill each other is the kind of world-building conceit that drives a near-future action/thriller. The GM in me knows how I’d handle it if a character in my campaign came up with this. We’ll see how Sum of All Things deals with it.