China kidnapped two Canadians. What will it take to free them?

Even a potential medical breakthrough that could help beat a global pandemic might not offer much hope for ‘the Michaels,’ two Canadians illegally imprisoned by China Fifteen years ago, in the aftermath of the SARS epidemic, a medical researcher named Michel Chrétien and his long-time collaborator Majambu Mbikay hatched a hypothesis in their Montreal laboratory. A global cohort of scientists was waking up to the reality of a new generation of infections like SARS. Chrétien and Mbikay, researchers at the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal (IRCM), believed a derivative of quercetin, a plant compound known to help lower cholesterol, was a “broad spectrum” antiviral drug that could fight a range of viruses. When an Ebola outbreak struck West Africa in 2014, the two scientists teamed up with the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg to test quercetin’s effectiveness on mice infected with Ebola—and found it remarkably effective. They also think it could work against the Zika virus. The medication still needs to undergo clinical trials. But late last year, when a new global health crisis erupted in Wuhan, China, Chrétien and his team once again got to work. Their research suggests the drug may work on COVID-19, the novel coronavirus.-- More...