No. The human immune system needs to interact with something that "looks" a lot like the actual virus to go through the process of developing antibodies. An antibody would need the ability to enter a functioning cell and to use the cell to create copies of itself. That is an unlikely thing.
Also, the rate of change of a virus means that antibodies for one strain may not be totally or even partially effective against a slightly different strain. (See flu, cold, etc.)
I'm guessing that this was a flood of antibodies that attach to the free virus in the body that block the spots on the virus that would enable the entry into healthy cells or hinder replication. The article indicates stopping infection of healthy cells, so I'm further guessing the former.
Evolution is an arms race. The tech hope would be the ability to quickly isolate, understand, and be able to generate vaccines or serums which would have extremely high probabilities of being safe and effective in humans without the long and complex trials needed to OK new treatments. By building better vaccines, we merely put selective pressure on pathogens.
As far as we know, these people could die in weeks to years of kidney or liver problems. They could develop neuro or muscular issues or cancer. This may have only saved them for now.
That takes a while, much much longer then how long it takes a mouse to react to a virus injected directly into its bloodstream. Human cells don't really enjoy growing outside the body.
Genetic alteration involves infecting a cell with a virus that cuts DNA and splices in its own (along with the correct antibody). You have the slight possibility that the virus cuts randomly, turning off some cancer-inhibitory pathways. B cells also have this really interesting maturation pathway where they splice their own DNA randomly in the process of becoming an antibody-producing cell.
Edit, to add: The B-cell maturation pathway is called V(D)J recombination. Cool stuff. It's how the immune system can create cells that respond to things it's never seen before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V(D)J_recombination
Thanks. It still seems like there must be some way to transfer what one individual's immune system has learned to another person. I'll have to read up on it some more.
Why can't we pursue a similar technology to treat the common cold, or MRSA for that matter?