yards apart, you know. ten yards was the magic distance over which the common cold virus couldn't jump. 18,000 volunteers are now believed to have spent time in isolation at the unit, but a cold cure remains elusive. about the time that i joined the unit, they discovered how to grow the virus in cell culture, and then the science took off. it turned out that there wasn't one common cold virus, but hundreds of them, and that makes vaccines very difficult. certain myths were tested as well. for instance, if you went out in the cold — particularly in the rain in the cold — this predisposed you to catching colds. there was no evidence at all that any of these things affected the instance of a cold. in the end, the common cold unit was closed for economic reasons. i think it was a big