BLACKSBURG, Va., April 12 -- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University issued the following news release:
Lewis Lanier '75 was an undergraduate at Virginia Tech when he took the virology class with Robert C. Bates that would change his career path.
"I can still remember the sunshine coming in the room and him lecturing that day," Lanier said in an interview with the American Association of Immunologists. "And what he told us in that lecture was if you take an adult mouse and infect it with this virus, the mouse becomes sick and paralyzed.
"But if you inject that same virus into a newborn baby mouse, everything is fine. The virus infects the mouse for life, but it never causes any damage."
It was a life-changing realization. La...