Ebola Cure May Have Been Developed As Early as 2011

After months of daily coverage, it appears that media attention towards the Ebola outbreak has completely vanished. And if the current numbers coming from the CDC are correct, then the Ebola outbreak in West Africa may be finally dwindling away. Infection rates are far lower than they were two months ago, and several countries that faced isolated outbreaks now have the situation under control. Although we’re certainly not out of the woods yet.

The medical infrastructure in that region is still a disaster, and there’s still a significant chance of the virus mutating before it can be extinguished. Not to mention the fact that our own hospitals are poorly equipped to deal with an outbreak, which was thoroughly demonstrated by the treatment of Thomas Duncan earlier this year. So with over 6,000 deaths and counting, and the lingering possibility of a resurgent outbreak, many have wondered what sort of cure we can expect in the future.

It turns it out that we may not have to look to the future. A cure may already exist that is at least 3 years old. And not only could it suppress an Ebola infection, but it may be able to treat every viral infection known to mankind. According to Natural News, the substance known as DRACOs may have huge implications for the future of medicine.

Published in the journal PLOS ONE, a groundbreaking study on this novel therapeutic explains how existing antiviral medications are scarce, and many of them largely ineffective. Viable treatments for the common cold, for example, are practically nonexistent, while newer diseases like SARS are regarded by public health officials as basically untreatable.

“In theory, it should work against all viruses,” stated Todd Rider, a senior staff scientist from the Lincoln Laboratory’s Chemical, Biological and Nanoscale Technologies Group and inventor of the technology, to MIT News.

DRACOs tell virus-infected cells to kill themselves

So what is this mysterious technological advancement? The paper calls them DRACOs, which is short for Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizers. In essence, it is a substance that induces apoptosis, or cell death, in cells containing viral dsRNA, the double-stranded RNA produced by viruses for the purpose of replication.

Human cells are naturally pre-programmed to create special proteins that destroy these dsRNA strands, but viruses can mutate to outsmart and bypass this safeguard. This is where DRACOs come in, adding an additional protein into the mix that triggers apoptosis in infected cells. This combined approach is not only effective against virtually all tested viruses, but it also eliminates the possibility of viral resistance.

“Viruses are pretty good at developing resistance to things we try against them,” stated Karla Kirkegaard, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, to MIT News about the development. “[B]ut in this case, it’s hard to think of a simple pathway to drug resistance.”

Best of all, this substance doesn’t hurt healthy tissue. The testing that has been conducted so far has shown no evidence of harmful effects against uninfected cells. Hopefully there can be further testing to ensure the safety and efficacy of DRACO’s, because it could potentially save millions of lives. Let’s just hope the medical industry doesn’t suppress this technology in the name of profits and sick care.