Smallpox scourged ancient lands; not even Pharaohs were beyond its deadly reach

But the defeat of smallpox is an atypical success: only one other virus, rinderpest, has been officially eradicated. Beating a virus is a rare feat – even the common cold still bedevils us — and the battle between humans and viruses continues to claim casualties. In 1918, a remarkably severe form of the flu killed at least 50 million people. In 2009, a related strain of H1N1 influenza – the "swine flu" – went pandemic. Despite the intervening century of medical advances, it killed 17,000 worldwide.

Even the garden-variety seasonal flu can be deadly. It infects up to 20 percent of the US population annually, with the CDC estimating yearly deaths at 3,000 to 49,000 for the four decades between 1976 and 2006. The seasonal vaccine counters three strains of influenza – an H3N2 virus, an influenza B virus and an H1N1 virus – but, like all vaccines, only if administered before infection. In the event of a pandemic, as movies like Outbreak and Contagion have shown, a novel strain could wreak havoc before a new vaccine was developed.

Recent research has produced drugs aimed at particular viruses. These antivirals can disrupt the development of HIV, herpes, and varieties of hepatitis and influenza, but their usefulness is limited by their specificity.

So even today, coping with viral infections often means treating the symptoms and waiting for the sickness to (hopefully) run its course. But what if there were a better way? A way to not just prevent infection from some viruses through vaccination, or inhibit a select few using antivirals? What if there were a way to kill all viruses dead, a magic bullet that'd seek out virus-infected cells in the body, then flip their biological suicide switches, leaving the patient healthy and virus-free?

Over a decade ago, Dr. Todd Rider was in the shower when he had just that idea. Last July, he and his colleagues published the early results of their work; the article’s simple title, "Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Therapeutics," belies the potential breakthrough, which is nothing less than a completely new approach. Rather than containment (antivirals) or prevention (vaccines), this method actually kills virus-infected cells, without harming normal cells. It’s an offensive weapon in the battle against viruses: dubbed Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) Activated Caspase Oligomerizer (DRACO), it eliminated 15 pathogens, from the common cold to H1N1 influenza to hemorrhagic fevers like the dengue virus. It works across 11 cell types, including human heart, lung, kidney, and liver cells. Mice infected with lethal doses of influenza were completely cured by DRACO treatment.

In other words, as Rider puts it, "DRACO has the potential to revolutionize the treatment and prevention of viral illnesses, just as antibiotics revolutionized the treatment and prevention of bacterial infections in the mid-twentieth century."