Portal:Viruses/Did you know/13

• ...that derivatives of diamond-like compound adamantane (model pictured) are used as drugs against flu and Parkinson's disease?
• ...that for 36 years, only two polyomaviruses were known to infect humans?
• ...that Ali Maow Maalin was the last person in the world to be infected with naturally occurring smallpox?
• ...that in his 2005 book Race Against Time, the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis claimed the spread of AIDS across Africa is partly due to a succession of disastrous economic policies promoted by international financial institutions?
• ...that his son's infection with polio in 1930 led electrical engineer Reinhold Rudenberg to develop an electron microscope as a tool to study the poliovirus?