Why can't we kill a virus yet?

Question

There are so many environmental things that can kill a virus yet we have yet to find a way to use this to our advantage. Oxygen kills virus's. Why not slowly oxygenate our body piece by piece and see if that works?

Answer 1

How do you know oxygenation kills all viruses? In fact oxygen alone doesn't, but free radicals can damage their genetic material. Viruses exist in so many different configurations and the way to get rid of them varies. But most of them can be deactivated by destroying or altering their genetic material. But we can't apply that to our human bodies because it would damage the genes in our cells too. That's why drug companies come up with anti-virals to combat certain viruses not by damaging their genes, but by preventing them from replicating. When they don't replicate, our immune system can get rid of them better.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Please use some discretion before making such comments about oxygen and things killing viruses. Viruses border the line between living and not. It's an open debate whether they are "alive" or not and hence whether or not they can be killed. A virus simply is genetic material (DNA or RNA: ds or ss) inside of a protein coat. They cannot reproduce by themselves, which is the leading argument for them not being truly alive. In order for them to reproduce, they need a host cell. The virus will insert its own genetic code into the cell's and essentially reprogram it to become a virus factory of sorts. Therein lies both the target for treatment and the difficulty of treatment. Antiviral drugs target the virus' means of replication. In the case of HIV, an RNA virus, one type of drug used to treat the disease is from a family known as reverse transcriptase inhibitors. These drugs block the virus from using reverse transcriptase to change their RNA into DNA that is used to take over the cell. The problem with viruses is, unlike you and I and truly alive things, they don't have "proofreading" when making copies of their genetic material. This leads to a high rate of mutation, which in turn alters the specificity of the target for drugs. That is why it's a very difficult task to develop treatment for viral infections. As for your oxygen kills viruses comment..... The common cold virus, influenza, and a whole score of others are able to be transmitted through the air. Last time I checked, the air around us has a good deal of oxygen in it. Millions of people get a cold and or the flu every year, I guess those were the lucky viruses that didn't get killed by atmospheric oxygen.

Answer 4

For now the virus cannot be easily killed but inhibit some of its developmental stages, the sole reason for it not to be easily killed is that it survive in its host cells using the host genetic materials, as result all that will harm the virus eventually harm the host and the host does not want to be killed. So until selective drugs that can kill only the virus is discovered the VIRUS will remain.

Answer 5

You can't kill something that is already dead. As mentioned by one of the previous answers, Viruses are non-living obligate parasites - they require a host to replicate their genetic material. The virus capsid (basic shape) is just designed to inject the genetic material into a host cell where it is copied hundreds/thousands of times before the host cell bursts releasing the newly created virus particles. As with all genetic materials, they can be damaged by free radicals, heat and ionising radiation, but the damage to the host would be far worse, as our DNA and hence RNA strands are far more complex than a virus and would outweigh the benefit of having damaged the virus to a point where it can no longer replicate.

Answer 6

Sure we can! If the survival of the host is not an issue, any time.
Seriously, the problem is that you need a specific target to be able to selectively (w/o killing the host) attack a pathogen. Since viruses are mostly using the host cells molecular machinery to perform functions for them, there is not much to target. Of course they have their own proteins but few of them, and if those are not drugable then you can't do much. Other potential method is to target the viral genom or transcripts with antisense-RNA technology. Or boost your own defence with interferones. So there are solutions, but they are not general and/or easy.

Answer 7

Actually, we can kill some viruses through the use of toxic oxygen molecules in the phagolysosome. Unfortunately, some viruses have evolved defenses to prevent this.

Answer 8

The Virus will kill us not the other way around. In fact it will probably wipe out the Humane race in the end.

Answer 9

you could kill viruses by drinking drano, but that wouldn't be very smart. the point is you have to find something that kills the virus but doesn't harm normal body cells.

Answer 10

Nope. We have antibiotics, but that kills living organisms. Viruses are not considered living since they can't reproduce on their own and for various other reasons.