Medicine: Succor from Seaweed

Despite its success in fighting many of mankind's worst maladies, medical science has made virtually no headway against a family of viruses that infects about 80% of the world's adult population: herpes simplex type I, which causes cold sores and herpes keratitis (an eye infection responsible for 18,000 cases of blindness in the U.S. every year) and type II, which produces sores in the genital area, and is under suspicion as one cause of cervical cancer.

Red Algae. Now two University of California researchers have discovered something that seems to stop the tenacious virus...

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