Question
A question on developing drugs
13 December 2006. Related: All topics.
I have a question on developing drugs. If blood is spilled from a person who has HIV they say to clean it up with bleach because bleach kills the virus. Why dont they find what in bleach kills the virus and make it stable enough for the human body to consume as a cure for HIV.
Answer
All sorts of things can kill a virus once it is outside the human body – this is easy.
For example, exposure to air will kill the virus too – within a minute or so of any blood being spilt.
The active ingredient in bleach is chlorine – which is included in drinking water and swimming pools in tiny very diluted quantities because it can kill bacteria. It had no affect on HIV though when you drink water, and if the higher concentrations were used it would be toxic and poisonous.
A drug works very differently.
It has to be made so that it works inside of a living cell, and only targets the virus and not other living cells and parts of the body.
This is why making effective drugs to work against any illness is so difficult. You want to use treatment that doesn’t cause difficult side effects.
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