Now this scares me…
Posted by Duncan on 21st July 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?
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