> This "kill em all" approach has been used forever, but as we have 
>seen with antibiotics, killing off all the micro-organisms in a host 
> can have harmful effects, since many of these are beneficial or 
> even essential. The same thing is true of viruses, they are not all "bad". 

I agree with you, Pete, but I don't think that is what was being proposed.

Without digging too deep, I got the impression that the project involved 
killing those cells which were hosting a specific virus and thus propagating 
the virus and disease.

That is a targeted approach and one that seems reasonable to me.  If it
works and the technique could be developed for specific honey bee viruses
I would think that might be a good thing.

At this point, though, it seems our understanding of bee viruses is limited 
and there is a lot of ground to cover before that approach might be practical.

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