Researchers at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt have discovered antibodies to the virus that made nearly 50 million victims worldwide ninety years ago thus the elderly survivors can now witness the revolutionary finding.

The study was conducted by James Crowe Jr., M.D., professor of Pediatrics and director of the Vanderbilt Program in Vaccine Sciences, Christopher Basler, Ph.D., at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and Eric Altschuler, M.D., Ph.D., at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical and it was published in the journal Nature.

They resurrected the 1918 virus from the bodies of victims killed at that time. The virus was preserved in the frozen soul of Alaska. On the other hand they collected blood samples from 32 survivors who are around 90 years old now, and discovered that they still possessed antibodies to the virus. They tested the collected samples on infected mice and proved that it kept alive all the mice they had injected with the killer flu.

It’s useless to create an antidote to the long gone virus, but the most important thing is the fact that human body’s immune system has confirmed to have an incredible memory as it still protected the old people who were tested from the devastating 1918 virus.

"It's incredible. The Lord has blessed us with antibodies our whole lifetime," said study co-author Dr. Eric Altschuler at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

This breakthrough technology may be used to develop antibodies against other viruses, like HIV.