Now this scares me…
Posted by Duncan on July 21st, 2008
via LGF, Charles writes:
Here’s a mind-expanding article by Michael Specter that appeared in The New Yorker last December, on a discovery about the way viruses infiltrate human cells and affect the coding of human DNA. The Human Genome Project has shown that our DNA contains many traces of extinct retroviruses that copied themselves into the human genetic code, but were then expelled, destroyed, or altered through the process of evolution.
This part above doesn’t necessarily scare me. Its more interesting to see how modern science is figuring out how we’re built and how we’ve been infected in the past, sorta like a molecular Cold Case detective. But here is where its starts to get, as is mentioned in the article, kinda Jurassic Park on me…
Then, last year, Thierry Heidmann brought one back to life. Combining the tools of genomics, virology, and evolutionary biology, he and his colleagues took a virus that had been extinct for hundreds of thousands of years, figured out how the broken parts were originally aligned, and then pieced them together. After resurrecting the virus, the team placed it in human cells and found that their creation did indeed insert itself into the DNA of those cells. They also mixed the virus with cells taken from hamsters and cats. It quickly infected them all, offering the first evidence that the broken parts could once again be made infectious. The experiment could provide vital clues about how viruses like H.I.V. work. Inevitably, though, it also conjures images of Frankenstein’s monster and Jurassic Park.
This troubles me because there is that stinking and sneaky Law of Unintended Consequences. Waking up or resurrecting a dormant virus might not just be a break through for science, it makes me think of Steven King’s The Stand or I Am Legend. Not necessarily the end of the world stuff, but the possibility of an epidemic and mass sickness. Like cloning, this is a road that, in my mind, might turn into a slippery slope before we know it…
Raven might have more insight into such medical issues than I… whatcha think? 
July 21st, 2008 at 7:17 am
There is nothing really new with this.
A couple yrs ago scientists dug up bodies of people killed by the first Avian Flu which hit the world in 1918…in order to determine just how the virus infiltrated, or crossed over from bird to human, they needed samples of the virus. They got the samples; brought them back to life and watched how they act under certain (controlled) situations. The scientists learned that there was and is a threshold upon which the virus mutates to an entirely different form, within three generations of it’s life span. We’ve passed two generations without a pandemic. We still have a ways to go though.
All viruses enter human DNA- this is what separates a virus from a bacteria. Viruses cause illnesses that cannot be cured or healed with antibiotics, because it is embedded within the DNA. Also, viruses are smaller, more limber, are able to withstand wide variants as to conditions it thrives under. Vaccines almost always protect us against viral agents and rarely bacterial threats. Vaccines work by exposing our bodies to the virus and therefore the body’s natural defenses step up to do their work. Without knowing how a virus works, what makes it tick, vaccines are useless.
Not all viruses are harmful either. The vast majority are not and are, in fact required for life.
They have found and activated viruses in ice samples from the polar caps- millions of yrs old. Amazing stuff really…in the wrong hands though, this could be a real danger to mankind.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:07 am
Good grief! Playing with viruses that could wipe us all out if they got in the wrong hands! I know they think they are doing “research” and are “smart” but I think that is just plain stupid!
July 21st, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I just hope that they are taking enough precautions to make sure that these viruses don’t get manipulated in such a way as to pose a health hazard to anyone at anytime. This is scary stuff!
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
A few decades from now, grad students will be making deadly diseases just for the technical challenge. Human life is cheap and plentiful.