February 1997
Taking On the Common Cold
By Rex Graham
Colds researchers deleted the word "cure" from their lexicons in the early 1960s when they discovered that some 200 different viruses can cause colds-far too many to conquer with a vaccine, the conventional method of defeating an infectious disease. With the discovery of each new family of cold virus-rhinovirus, coronavirus, Coxsackie virus, adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, to name a few-researchers sank into a deeper funk. And as funding for common-cold research by the National Institutes of Health dwindled to its current level of $2 million per year, a mere 0.02 percent of its total budget, most researchers moved on to study influenza, herpes, AIDS, or other viral diseases.
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