. . You know, I've been thinking about this a fair amount lately, and it's a bit depressing: how many viruses have actually been cured? Plenty of diseases have been cured, but it recently hit me how viruses specifically are so prone to mutations that it practically makes a cure impossible. Consider the common cold.
I've tried to Google lists of viruses that have been cured and have come up short.
That's not to say that viruses can't be eradicated -- the best hope, as has been managed with other viruses and is extensively researched with AIDS, seems to be a vaccine. I suppose maybe this just runs into a matter of semantics, but I would so rather find a cure than a vaccine. But the more time goes by, the more it seems like, anyone who's already got the virus is just fucked, from HIV right down to HSV (herpes).
The end of AIDS would be so much happier if it could be something that rid it from everyone infected already, rather than just waiting until they all die off while everyone else gets vaccinated. . .
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sarken
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-01 12:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-01 08:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-03 06:40 am (UTC).
You know, I've been thinking about this a fair amount lately, and it's a bit depressing: how many viruses have actually been cured? Plenty of diseases have been cured, but it recently hit me how viruses specifically are so prone to mutations that it practically makes a cure impossible. Consider the common cold.
I've tried to Google lists of viruses that have been cured and have come up short.
That's not to say that viruses can't be eradicated -- the best hope, as has been managed with other viruses and is extensively researched with AIDS, seems to be a vaccine. I suppose maybe this just runs into a matter of semantics, but I would so rather find a cure than a vaccine. But the more time goes by, the more it seems like, anyone who's already got the virus is just fucked, from HIV right down to HSV (herpes).
The end of AIDS would be so much happier if it could be something that rid it from everyone infected already, rather than just waiting until they all die off while everyone else gets vaccinated.
.
.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-03 03:38 pm (UTC)