Quote:
Originally posted by TheGiantMidgit@Feb 15 2006, 08:38 PM
All it would take would be an anti-biotic resistance adaption from a multitude of common pathogens to become a major threat. ...and seeing how people use antibiotic medication these days, that's not difficult to imagine. Outbreaks of resistant influenza viruses could be lethal, even.
|
Viruses are not bacteria. They are naturally resistant to antibiotics. That is why the only trestment for viral infections are vaccination, or keeping the patient alive long enough for their own immune system to handle the virus (easy to do for the common cold, very hard to do for ebola). Sometimes, if you are sure that the people had the same viral strain and there is no blood type mismatch, you can inject antibody laden blood serum from a survivor into someone still afflicted.
With molecular nanotechnology and a better understanding of what the genes do, we can just gene sequence the virus and manufacture an antibody that will latch on to that specific strain of virus (after making sure that it will not also tag any body tissues as foreign).
There are anti-viral drugs, but they are nowhere near as effective as antibiotics were against bacteria.