• Question: when you are working on any illnesses have you experienced what it is like to have that illness(do you have or have had any illnesses that you have been working on?

    Asked by lilbowen to Lyn, Katy, Paul, PB, Ruth on 18 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Peter Balfe

      Peter Balfe answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      My research work history has included studies on malaria, HIV and HCV. I’m glad to say I’ve never met any of these guys in the very personal way you describe!

      Though I do know there are a few HIV researchers who are HIV positive.

    • Photo: Katy Brown

      Katy Brown answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      The retroviruses viruses I study are related to HIV but because they are so old, they are damaged and can’t cause disease any more. However, all humans have thousands of these retroviruses – nearly 10% of our DNA comes from retroviruses- so I have lots of them, and so do you! Luckily, they can’t do any harm any more.

      I’ve never caught a disease in the lab and its very rare to do so – the safety regulations for working with anything which could cause a disease are very strict.

    • Photo: Ee Lyn Lim

      Ee Lyn Lim answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Thankfully, I have never had cancer! And I hope I never will. When I was very little one of my aunts died of breast cancer, but sadly I don’t remember her very well.

      The answer to your question probably depends a lot on what we are each working on – I used to work next door to some people who did research on the flu, so I’m sure they had plenty of experience with that! 🙂

    • Photo: Paul Waines

      Paul Waines answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Thankfully no- we carry out work with bacteria/ viruses etc. using a range of techniques which mean that the risk of catching anything is kept as low as possible e.g by wearing labcoats. We also don’t want to contaminate our samples with anything which we might be carrying!

    • Photo: Ruth Mitchell

      Ruth Mitchell answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      No, thankfully not. Although I do know some people with multiple sclerosis and it brings home our relevant my research is.
      Multiple sclerosis isn’t a virus or a bacteria so you can’t catch it from working on it.
      Research is slow which means that a treatment will take several years from the time it is found to being used in a patient. An uncle of mine once said: “Even though we may not benefit personally from the the research going on currently, we support it because we know people down the line will benefit from it”.

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