Curing the common cold, one of medicine's most elusive goals, may now be in the realm of the possible.  The International Herald Tribune reports the key may lie in genetic mapping.
Genetic researchers say they have developed what they believe is a complete catalogue of the cold virus's vulnerabilities.
"We are now quite certain that we see the Achilles' heel, and that a very effective treatment for the common cold is at hand," said Stephen Liggett, an asthma expert at the University of Maryland and co-author of the finding.
Dr. E. Kathryn Miller, an asthma authority at the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville, said the new finding "is a groundbreaking study of major significance to the scientific world."