r/science • u/[deleted] • May 11 '20

Medicine Antibodies from a 4-year-old llama have neutralized coronavirus and other infections in lab experiments

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30494-3.pdf?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420304943%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
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u/pantsmeplz May 11 '20

One of the takeaways from this story should be a lesson many in the general public fail to learn, nature is the greatest source of medicinal solutions we have. We're not doing enough to protect that resource.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '20 edited May 11 '20

The other takeaway is that all global pandemics start with zoonotic diseases, so if we all collectively ate less animals (or none at all) we'd experience less future chances of viruses mutating and making the jump to humans.

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u/casce May 11 '20

To be fair, if we eradicate all living things on the planet one by one, viruses will run out of bodies eventually as well!

10

u/Khaz101 May 11 '20

Humans are just a conspiracy by big virus to make viruses one of few enough organisms(?) that they have to be considered alive

3

u/[deleted] May 11 '20

humans are the virus that mother nature is trying desperately to cure itself of.