For many years it seems that scientist have been searching for a way to cure cancer. The film I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, presents a fictitious world in which that cure has been found.

In the film, research scientists have injected reovirus into the entire world's population, in order to do away with cancerous cells. The results however, did not pan out as planned. 99% of all people have become infected with a deadly virus that has killed almost all of them, leaving only a handful of infected humans behind. The remaining 1% not infected with the virus were indeed immune and must live among the bloodthirsty and murderous infected humans.

Although I Am Legend may seem to be slightly far-fetched, a Canadian scientist has actually been using the reovirus as a potential cure for cancer.

Dr. Patrick Lee is a virologist, like Smith's character Dr. Robert Neville, as well as a cancer biologist. In the late 1990s, Lee began injecting the reovirus into cancerous mice where he found that the injections not only lessened the tumors in size, but also did away with cancerous cells, leaving behind the healthy cells.

This finding was published in the journal Science, and since then Lee has continued his cancer research at Dalhousie University. Lee aspires to know more about what reovirus actually is and how it goes about killing cancerous cells from within the body. Lee and his team have also begun an experiment in which they will determine the safety of the reovirus within the human body.

With regards to I Am Legend, Dr. Lee says that it is improbable that the situation presented in the film will happen. Lee says that he is positive that the reovirus will not put humans into such a vampirical state. Well, thank goodness for that!

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."