So, do the wonder twins save the world?

It's certainly clear to me that the ability to cure one disease is certainly close enough to cure another disease...

Does the black liquid exit the body in other places than the head?

Don't know....maybe we should ask the writers of smallville because that's where I first seen that black liquid when Clark was trying to kill the phantom in the form of a human.

Some Spoiler Space just to be safe.

Not in the slightest. The smallpox vaccine doesn't work against polio, and as we saw this week, Mohinder's blood isn't working against the new viral strain. A cure to a disease is as specific as the disease itself.

I've got two theories here

1) The Shanti virus is a red herring. Just as we saw last year, the circumstances of the bomb going off changed because instead of Sylar being the bomb, it ended up being Peter. Likewise, I have the feeling that the virus twins will end up being the true danger (possibly via Sylar) rather than the Shanti virus. Maya doesn't seem to emitany sort of real virus, I think she's emitting death itself.

2) Let's say that the Company does bag Claire (and let's be honest, who doesn't want to bag Claire), they will likely try to create a cure by injecting her with the virus and waiting for her to express antibodies, which can then be given to Niki. But, what if the virus has some retroviral properties, and takes on the gene that allows Claire's regeneration; then we would have a virus capable of resisting attempts to destroy it, which could then turn out to be the plague capable of killing 93% of the world's population. Consider that even HIV, Ebola, and all the rest of the worst diseases of history do not have a 100% mortality rate (though AIDS is damned close, there are some individuals capable of immunity).

Except that the guy that was leading Peter around in the future specifically called it the Shanti Virus, both in the episode and in this week's graphic novel.

The question is, though, will Claire 'heal' from a virus? We've repeatedly seen her heal from physical trauma (jumping out a window), but nothing about how she would heal from an infection.

From what I understand, viruses 'reproduce' by commandeering the regenerative power of the cell and 'tricking' it into producing copies of the virus. It could be that injecting Claire would be a really bad thing - the virus could mutate and take on her regenerative ability. The virus, then, becomes virtually indestructible.

Yes, but we don't know that it's not cummincable, since it kills so quickly. We haven't seen what happens when the bodies are found.

Something I hope we never find out.....

Me.

they will likely try to create a cure

That would be incredibly foolish, as one of the symptoms of the virus is that is removes or supresses powers. I think they are hoping that they can just do a blood transfusion. Speaking of which, Mohinder (and Claire) had better be Type O or they are going to kill someone if they keep doing whole blood transfusions. They may anyway, as they can only be postive or negative, not both.

the virus

Yeah, like the people 5 years hence said Sylar had exploded.

says...

Give in to the dark side!

Yes, but future Peter explained that - they had been lied to.

Hetero female, remember?