Washington Post: Eradication of hepatitis C on the horizon
Lenny Bernstein, Washington Post columnist

“It’s an easy and reliable applause line for budget cutters to find some basic medical research and complain that it’s a complete waste of money, especially if those dollars are put up by taxpayers, as they often are. … One exception I recently read is an article by two physicians, Raymond T. Chung and Thomas F. Baumert, with the lofty title: ‘Curing Chronic Hepatitis C — The Arc of a Medical Triumph.’ Their analysis in an April issue of the New England Journal of Medicine shows exactly how valuable such research and a cooperative government can be. … The result, Chung and Baumert say, is that ‘it may now be possible to imagine the global eradication of [hepatitis C]’ if issues of cost, early detection and re-infection can be overcome — a potential landmark in public health progress, brought about by the system created to accomplish just that” (5/12).