A chemist talks about possible antiviral drugs for the 21st century. Researchers have developed drugs to use against bacteria, but viruses are harder to eliminate.
Viruses use the natural processes in their host's body to create energy and reproduce.
So it's hard to hurt them without hurting the host. But some viruses are transmitted by mosquito. We spoke with Dr. Ronald Breslow, a chemistry professor and researcher at Columbia University, about mosquito-borne viruses and the development of antiviral drugs. But some are. The West Nile virus, for instance that everybody is talking about, is a virus that does survive in mosquitoes and gets transmitted.