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From: rpm@hlwpc.UUCP (Dick Muldoon)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Re: Cure My Cold, Please
Message-ID: <628@hlwpc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Nov-85 10:01:53 EST
Article-I.D.: hlwpc.628
Posted: Tue Nov 12 10:01:53 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Nov-85 08:07:57 EST
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Short Hills, NJ
Lines: 29

Tim Mikkelsen in <15100001@hpfclp.UUCP> writes:
> I also seem to remember a medicated 'kleenex'.

Eliot C. Dick (Univ of Minnesota? Wisconsin?) came up with an 
iodine-treated tissue that was tested at McMurdo Station, Antarctica,
as a way of cutting down transmission of cold viruses from
the October newcomers to those who'd wintered at the station.
Soaked in iodine and wrapped in their own plastic sheaths, the
tissues were distributed to everyone on station to be used immediately
to wash face and hands after a sneeze or a nose-blow.  It worked!
Incidence of colds (aka URI--upper respitory infection) declined
dramatically.  One side-effect however, was a profusion of brown 
noses, brown hands, brown faces, etc., due to the iodine.  On the
ice, nobody cared.  In NYC I doubt the stuff would sell.

I lost track of the work until a picnic some months ago, when I
re-met one of the folks who worked on the project.  He said they found
that using tissues soaked in ascorbic acid was just as effective as
using tissues soaked in iodine--and a lot more pleasing cosmetically.  
(There really *is* something to taking vitamin C for colds; you rub 
it on your hands and face to kill the virus before it spreads!!!)
I don't know for sure, but I think some tissue company is working 
on a commercial "Cold-Killer" product using the results.  (Least I
hope so:  when I was with National Science Foundation's Antarctic
Program we liked to point to this project as one that could have real
economic/health returns (as opposed to all the others...))

Dick Muldoon  {ihnp4}..hlwpc!rpm  (201) 564-4043
HL 1L-413  AT&T Bell Laboratories, Short Hills, NJ