Thoughts And Trivia

Virus! Vi r u s(ick)! Bird-Flu pandemic scare scares us all. Sometime back it was SARS. I wonder what the viruses are upto?

Virus in dormant form are not living things but large protein molecules. Still the tendency to perpetuate their genes is much more virulent than in larger living things. The animal-human viruses like bird-flu, mad-cow disease and SARS create a pandemic. Even AIDS is rumoured to have passed on from monkeys to humans. I suspect a purely human (or purely animal) virus is not virulent since its not programmed genetically to totally wipe-out its parasite-host. In animal-human virus this restraint is not seen. Does my hunch make sense?
Virus spreads from one living parasite-host to another, but not from vegetable and fruit. Why are vegetable kingdom immune to cross vegetable-human virus? If we all revert to vegetarian diet and stop keeping pets except in Zoo, can we avoid at least animal-human viruses - that are a real danger?

Posted by Girish Bhatnagar at Sunday, October 23, 2005