Don’t Assume That the Only Good Virus is a Dead Virus.
We’re all virused out – sick to death of hearing and talking and dealing with the current pandemic. Which got me thinking – I’ll bet not all viruses are detrimental to human health. So here’s my short layman’s report about a few of… The Good Viruses Virotherapy is an expanding field that may enable us use viruses to treat diseases. More than 9 million people around the world die from cancer every year. Chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery are successful therapies, but all have significant side effects because they all kill off a significant number of non-cancerous cells during the course of treatment – as well as seeing a fairly high incidence of recurrence after successful treatment. Over the years research has shown cancer regression in patients suffering from unrelated viral infections. The search for alternative cancer treatments has led to research on those viruses - from a number of different families. Collectively known as oncolytic viruses, they hav...