Biology News Four :)

Kills All Unknown Germs

Bob Holmes

New Scientist

August 8, 2009, Page 41-43

            This article is about new strategies scientists are developing to defend your body against viruses. They are working on new antiviral drugs that not only work to defend the body against existing viruses, but also are affective against viruses that haven’t even evolved yet. Before these tactics started to be developed, the approach to creating antiviral medication was “one bug, one drug” meaning that each virus had one specific medication geared to destroy it. This is problematic because since there is only one drug, a virus can adapt itself to withstand the drug and it becomes even more lethal. The new methods being developed for antiviral medications it now being centered on attacking the host cells that the virus takes hold of. Scientist found out how to detect if a virus has attacked a host cell in a few different ways, one of which is that the cell releases fatty substances on its outside when its “stressed” or has been taken over by a virus. This then tells the medication to destroy the cell, which destroys the virus that is reproducing inside of it. Because the medication centers on host cells, it is more difficult for the pathogen to mutate to resist it, but it also can present more side effects, which is why these drugs are still under a lot of testing. Hopefully, if all things go right, scientist expect that these super drugs will be on shelves ready to protect us from the net major break out of disease in the next decade.

            This article is very good news because it describes the advances in medicine that scientists are making. Because of the outbreak of the H1N1 virus, scientists have taken steps to prepare for the next outbreak of a virus, no matter what it is. This is very comforting to the reader because even though it might be a decade into the future, we know that humans are becoming stronger and starting to outsmart diseases, instead of the other way around. This article has a very big impact on the world because everywhere people are battling disease and this news presents the possibility to eliminate some deadly viruses around the world and prevent new ones from appearing and wiping out large populations.  One must also understand, though, that these new drugs are still in the testing and developing stages so something that a scientist might hypothesize to work, might not in reality, so one mustn’t get their hopes up. Until further research is done, we won’t know for sure how effective these drugs will be or even if they are effective at all. They might do more harm than good to humans, but we’ll never know until more research is done.

            I would recommend this article to anyone who is interested in the development of new drugs or in virus defense. It was very interesting and I learned new things about viruses like how they reproduce and how you can tell if they have attacked a host cell. If you aren’t an expert at biology, this is still a good article to read, but you have to look past the confusing virus names and biology jargon to get the main idea of the article. I believe anyone interested in the medical world of medicine would benefit from reading this article and would learn a lot and gain new perspective. I also believe that any ordinary person reading this article would gain a sense of hope for the future from reading this article. (600 words)