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.

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 who invented the new technology.

Because the technology is so broad-spectrum, it could potentially also be used to combat outbreaks of new viruses, such as the 2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak, Rider says.

Read the rest, here

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/antiviral-0810.html

and here,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/draco-drug-could-cure-almost-any-virus_n_924435.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

While I think this is great news, I also ponder how much and how watered down it'll be, once in big medicine's hands. Also, if it turns out to be effective against HIV, Hepatitis, Ebola, Smallpox etc, what does that do to Earth's population?

Also what happens as people misuse it like the current antibiotics and the viruses become resistant as they are now.

That's sort of another pet peeve I have these days. Not exactly the part about watering down current antibiotics, but the fact that people are too antiseptic now. If we live in a virtual hermetically sealed existence, we're only harming ourselves. We won't have any sort of organic resistance to much of anything, and we'll depend on outside sources such as antibiotics.

Play in the mud, people. =]

Yep everybody knows germs are gonna save us from the next alien invasion.

what does that do to Earth's population?

That's pretty much the scariest part.

Hiv?

I'm curious to know how it behaves with HIV too

A man was cured of hiv in germany a couple of months ago. Got to google it I dont have the story on me.

i think the guy you're talking about, gg, was getting a new leukemia treatment or something, and the doctor.....crap, can't really remember....but they said it was a one in a million bajillion chance. i think it sounds hopeful, but the doctors don't.

Hey any chance is better than no chance in my opinion.

Yeah, he was being treated for cancer of some sort. They weren't trying to treat the HIV.

I had to take an entire semester on HIV/AIDS (was awful) but my professor is one of the leading people on the disease and he believes it'll never have a cure (I can't remember why, but I'll try to see if i can find his paper online)