Inventor of Microsoft's spam filter perceives that the principle operating to keep spam out of inboxes can as well work to keep the AIDS virus at bay.

"We have an adversarial situation going on between spam filters trying to block the spam and the spammers changing and mutating," the Age quoted him as saying.
"And in the case of HIV, we have the immune system fighting the virus and HIV mutating to try to get through," he said.
According to him, the key to fighting spam and HIV is the same - find the part that absolutely can't mutate - what he calls the Achilles' heel - and attack there.
"It mutates a lot, but it can't mutate to where it stops functioning... if it does do that, we win," he said.
The work now is to find the point up to which the virus can mutate, and beyond which it will die.
Advertisement
"I think it is a solvable problem, but we have a lot of work left to do... But I'm working on this every day, and I'm hopeful," he said.
Advertisement