This could be huge.

Really. Most of the time, these great new basic science ideas don't work out at all, or aren't what they are cracked up to be. (Remember how Judah Folkman's ideas about angiogenesis were going to cure cancer? Instead, angiogenesis inhibitors have turned out to be of some modest benefit in slowing some cancers in conjunction with regular chemotherapy. No real breakthrough at all, sadly.)

But if this novel approach to antiviral therapy works, then not only will they have cured the common cold (probably long before we send another person to the moon), they will have cured lots, maybe most, maybe just about all viral infections. Don't hold your breath -- it will be many years before we know whether this can really work in humans. But it just might. And this is why the government funds basic research. This work was 100% government funded from the beginning, and the latest work "is funded by grant AI057159 (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/Pages/default.a​spx) from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases."

But you know, that's socialism. So it's evil.