webgecko

lol rofl ouch time for more codeine webgecko

Thanks for letting me in on these new virus technologies. To finish on the HIV\SIV thing. It occurs to me that some variants of HIV and SIV seem to do no harm in different primates ( for HIV also seen in some people ). There are people looking into this I know. We need to find out why. I don't know a lot about the Immune system. I am assuming lymphocytes must have some way of differentiating between local cells etc and invaders or strangers. Do our cells have chemical markers so the lymphocytes can do this ? It seems strange to me that SIV is considered a viral stranger in certain primates and yet the immune systems of these animals do not destroy the SIV ( because we can detect it ). Something interesting is happening there. Either these primates ( and perhaps people i.e. HIV ) have something different with their cells or it is the distinct SIV variant which can't infect their cells. It still leads me to say, hey maybe SIV is NOT a stranger there as opposed to HIV in people which obviously is. Virusses may not be lymphocytes but does this preclude the possibility that at some point in the past that they were actually manufactured in the bodies of animals ( everywhere it seems as they are present all over the planet on land, sea etc in their millions ). There has been a hell of a lot of life on this planet for a long time giving plenty of opportunity for virus production. Virusses could have been manufactured in certain animals and then perhaps devolved into a parasitic life style which has been suggested ( general analogy only ) above. Anyways I hope they get a handle on how to defend us better against those pesky critters soon. Virusses cause some nasty problems with people. webgecko

SkepticLance After further reading out on the web I guess I have to agree. I had a general misconception on the nature of lymphocytes and my argument was maybe too simplistic. You said we have a good idea of the life cycle of virusses and yet we still don't know their true origin. Again our knowledge is still incomplete. Imagine if we could harness virusses to our advantage. They can destroy cells etc so imagine if we could harness ones we are immune to which would actually attack the invaders of our bodies and destroy them. That would be a usefull technology and application for some virusses. webgecko

What if God uses 12 dimensional string theory to create multiple donut like branes of space time which collide causing multiple big bangs and multiple multiverses in which man continues to evolve and speciate eventually learning how to travel intergalactically and eventually through the multiverses forever and ever and ever and ..... Actually this is giving me a migraine and may be too horrific to contemplate. webgecko NY Better to burn out than it is to rust.

SkepticLance This is my point exactly. Variants of SIV have also been found in chimps and HIV is supposed to be very similar to SIV. Some scientists think that SIV is the precursor to HIV. If HIV and SIV are alike then it makes sense that HIV was not making the chimps sick. It is to me like HIV is similar to an agent (SIV) that has maybe been part of the chimps' system for a long time. Why couldn't this agent actually be an immune agent ? Which brings me to another question. Are virusses at all like lymphocytes ? Lymphocytes are immune agents. Virusses can infect and destroy other organisms which have at least one (or more ) cell wall. So they could make good immune agents for some organisms. The Mimivirus article points out that there are literally millions and millions of different virusses in the world, on land, in the sea and who knows where else. BUT I think that wherever there is life, there we will find them. Virusses are flexible entities and can both enter and break free of hosts. Maybe my idea that they could be some form of immune agent is wrong. But then maybe it could bear some investigation. If we can ascertain the source of various virusses perhaps this will give us the insight\info we need to better deal with them in future. webgecko

Here is another interesting link relevant to this. http://www.avert.org/origins.htm webgecko

The link I gave above doesn't seem to work. Hopefully this one should. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/ webgecko

I read a book a few years ago called the White Death which suggested that SIV\HIV may have jumped to people from a species of african green monkey which was used in the manufacture of an early polio vaccine and trialled on africans in a certain area. Early reports of HIV infection seemed to come from the population in that area. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmart...ocuments/AIDS/ Interested to know what others think about this angle. I was also informed via email by a friend a number of years ago that he thought the HIV virus was manufactured by the US government ? I don't take this seriously and have found no other evidence to corroborate this idea. I have included this idea as an amusing aside ( to many who don't find the suggestion amusing, my apologies ). thanks Web Gecko

ScepticLance : I read a book a few years ago called the White Death which suggested that SIV\HIV may have jumped to people from a species of african green monkey which was used in the manufacture of an early polio vaccine and trialled on africans in a certain area. Early reports of HIV infection seemed to come from the population in that area. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/ Interested to know what you think about this angle. Thanks for your other comments. Bascule: Thanks for that link to an extremely interesting article. Here is another quote from the article : Quote Some scientists go a step further. They believe that viruses played a role even earlier in the evolutionary mix. The precise order in which the three domains of life evolved—whether, say, the eukaryotes emerged before or after the archaea and bacteria—is a much-debated subject. So is the identity of the progenitor of those different domains, the so-called last universal common ancestor, or LUCA, as it was dubbed by Forterre at the first Les Treilles conference in 1996. "I'm probably one who has asserted most sternly that LUCA was viral," says Luis Villarreal, the director of the Center for Virus Research at the University of California at Irvine. "The genes and gene functions suggest that we're dealing with one of the earliest and oldest forms of life. Mimivirus really stretches our sense of scale of what a virus can be." But just how far can that scale be stretched? David Prangishvili, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and a colleague with Forterre in studying viruses that infect archaea, now thinks that viruses swam in the primordial soup prior to the emergence of cellular life of any kind and only later became dependent on cells. Forterre is less convinced. "It is difficult for me to imagine," he says. "You need to have some type of closed system to be sure that the different reactants of the metabolism, or different mechanisms, can interact with each other and also have a kind of Darwinian evolution. You need to have individuals. I think there was an RNA world prior to the DNA world, when you had a lot of RNA cells. Maybe viruses originated at the time of the RNA cell. You need to have a cell to even obtain a virus." End Quote To repeat, "You need to have a cell to even obtain a virus.". I register the argument that virusses may predate cells but to my thinking it makes better sense that the cell came first. The Mimivirus article as a whole may indicate that this is not the case. Thanks again Web Gecko

Hi to Nashyboyo What I was saying is that maybe virusses originate from or are part of the immune systems of various animals etc.. Then they may change and jump to other species\organisms where they do damage. Influenza virusses can transfer via droplets of liquid when we sneeze or cough. My further reading from Bascule and ScepticLance indicate that my proposition may be somewhat simplistic. BUT if there was an identifiable source of various virusses this may help us to deal with them and the diseases they cause in the future ?

Hello I have been following the ongoing worldwide study of influenza pandemics of the past, H5N1 with interest. I have a question regarding virusses in general. My Question I have heard genetic scientists talk about virusses and at this point in history we seem to know quite a lot about their genetics etc.. When it comes to their origin however, as far as I know we don't know how virusses came into being. I have heard ideas that they may be remnants of primordial dna or nucleic acid systems but this answer doesn't completely satisfy my curiosity. It seems to me that a virus is well equipped to invade the cells in many different types of body tissue and effectively destroy those cells while multiplying successfully. To me it is behaving almost like an immune agent. Could virusses in fact originate in certain animals and be manufactured as say perhaps, lymphocytes or other products of an animals immune system ? In that animal the virus would be inactive until invading agents ( bacterial ? etc ) entered. Could a virus successfully attack and destroy a multi-cellular invader ( bacteria etc ?). I think in the study of aids\HIV they have found similar virusses ( SIV ) in certain monkey species. They think that somehow SIV perhaps changed and jumped to humans. In humans the SIV variant HIV ( if this is the case ) is potentially lethal in the long term as the T cells of the immune system are targetted early and destroyed thus impairing and detroying the immune response of the host etc.. Could it be possible that SIV is actually part of the immune system of the monkey species in question ? I may be wrong but it seems possible. Would be interested to hear what others think. Thanks. Webgecko