Taking a saliva sample from the world's largest bat is not easy under ordinary circumstances, but obtaining that same sample from a SARS-infected flying fox — while using a 4-foot cotton swab and wearing a pressurized biosafety suit with double-layered rubber gloves — can be downright infuriating. "There comes a point where you just have to say 'that's enough,'" says Gary Crameri, a technician at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, about an hour's drive south of Melbourne.
When I visit him in late November, Crameri had just exposed half a dozen flying foxes to the virus that causes SARS. The hope is that this tricky experiment will shed light on a molecular receptor that SARS seems to be using to get inside cells. If this hunch about receptors is correct,...
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