I understand that viruses can be suppressed by the immune system – but it seems most tend to continue living in our bodies and we only get “sick” from them when our immune systems are weakened.
Why can’t we create a cure that eradicates the virus from the body? Not talking about retroantivirals.
In: Biology
It’s trivially easy to get rid of every virus in the body. You can use bleach, you can use really high heat, you can use all sorts of things.
Oh. You want the body to survive, huh? Well, that’s a lot harder.
The problem with viruses is that in order to “kill” them, you have to find a way to interact with them that doesn’t interact with other things in the body – at least not too much. The number of systems in your body means you need to be very specific in what you do, but the speed at which viruses mutate means you need to be very *broad* in what you do. These two things are at odds, and it’s one of the main difficulties of designing antiviral treatments.
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