>We lost the fight with viruses a decade ago. If you get infected with a deadly viral disease, like rabies, it's curtains. There's nothing any hospital can do f

>We lost the fight with viruses a decade ago. If you get infected with a deadly viral disease, like rabies, it's curtains. There's nothing any hospital can do for you except sedate you until you're dead. What? We never had effective antivirals. We have a few useful drugs (oseltamivir, protease inhibitors, etc) for particular viruses, but there has never been a point in human history when rabies was a treatable disease. The Milwaukee protocol, which is the only effective[1] non-vaccine treatment for rabies, isn't even drug-based! You may of course be confused. The major antiviral used in replications of the Giese case, amantadine, was also an anti-flu drug, resistance to which is now widespread in influenza (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amantadine#Veterinary_misuse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amantadine#Veterinary_misuse ). However, I do not believe amantadine resistance has ever been described in rabies, which in any case is usually treated with vaccination -- the challenge is to get the immune system to respond to the virus before the host dies! Giese herself was treated with both amantadine and ribavirin. In any case, your claim is confusing at best, misleading at worst. [1]: controversial, see http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/712839_7 http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/712839_7