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Viruses Might Be Actual Living Creatures


Still Waters

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Research published last week in Nature appears to add another point to the controversial argument that viruses might be living creatures. Scientists at Tufts University School of Medicine have found a virus that captures its host’s immune system and uses it to destroy the host.

In order to be deemed a real “living creature”, an organism needs to have a genome, be able to grow and make more of itself by replication, and be capable of evolving, or adapting to its environment over successive generations. Humans are living creatures, as we exhibit all of those capacities.

http://blogs.discove...g/#.UUTMKjdNFRM

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more human bigotry nonsense

virus are the 'perfect' living creatures

they the closest to 'immortal' as we define it

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Well, that's nice. I still want to eradicate them...don't care if they're *alive* *dead* *undead*.

I'm with you on that. :tu:

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I thought it was well known that virus's adapted. After all we get a new Flu shot every year, because the flu virus keeps changing. Or is that supposed to be just random mutation.

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I have always had a hunch that Viruses could be alive.

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Well, that's nice. I still want to eradicate them...don't care if they're *alive* *dead* *undead*.

You might think that to be the case, but like the song says, it ain't necessarily so. Much of our human genome is made up of segments of DNA that we have acquired from viruses. In a scientific experiment on sheep, they deactivated certain viral components of the sheep's DNA and found that the sheep could not carry offspring to term. No virus DNA, no baby lambs. So while there are certainly some horrible nasty killer viruses like ebola, and annoying ones like the rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, apparently we also cannot function properly without their genetic input. In any case the viruses they are referencing here are bacteriophages, viruses that kill bacteria and in this case a bacteria that causes many human deaths every year.

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So, one could argue that a human is the evolved sum of individual life forms working in near harmony.

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The day Viruses become sentient.....Odin help us all.

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You can almost hear vegans worldwide conspiring to have all vaccines banned because 'killing viruses is murder'.

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You can almost hear vegans worldwide conspiring to have all vaccines banned because 'killing viruses is murder'.

Next thing you'll know PETA will be up in arms. I mean it's not that big of a stretch, considering they go after anything.

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Next thing you'll know PETA will be up in arms. I mean it's not that big of a stretch, considering they go after anything.

I like it best when they 'go' naked

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So, one could argue that a human is the evolved sum of individual life forms working in near harmony.

As when all humans and countries drop their weapons and start to shake hands, the Earth will be a harmonic living creature.

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I had this argument with my Biology teacher in 1984. It's alive because it reproduces and reacts to external stimuli . just because it doesn't have the qualities of other organisms such as bacteria doesn't mean we have the right to say it's not a living thing. And I'll e-slap anyone who says fire qualifies as living as it consumes oxygen, reproduces and reacts to external stimuli. Teacher said that and I almost slapped him!

Edited by Chooky88
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Of course viruses are living things lol

They are concdiered to be neither living nor dead

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Research published last week in Nature appears to add another point to the controversial argument that viruses might be living creatures.

Can they be reasoned with?

Call for truce and offer a bribe?

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I had this argument with my Biology teacher in 1984. It's alive because it reproduces and reacts to external stimuli . just because it doesn't have the qualities of other organisms such as bacteria doesn't mean we have the right to say it's not a living thing. And I'll e-slap anyone who says fire qualifies as living as it consumes oxygen, reproduces and reacts to external stimuli. Teacher said that and I almost slapped him!

When I was five years old, I was convinced that fire was alive. Two houses in my neighborhood burned down, and I just knew that it was after me next.

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they are uncomfortable calling 'virus' "Living Creatures" because that would make "Viruses" Immortal

they feel more comfort with viruses not living so viruses not dying doesn't matter

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They are concdiered to be neither living nor dead

Undead?

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Living or not, to be or not to be? Many parisites are simple compared with their free-living relatives. Worms that live in the gut may not posess a digestive system, absorbing nutrients by osmosis as it were. While similar species that live in water or soil have a fully functional digestive system. So the question my be: are viruses degenerate organisms reduced to such a simple state that the require a living cell to reproduce? Perhaps they were once more complex, akin to bacteria or other simple life, but over time only parasitic forms survived. These are very complex little bundles of DNA and it begs the questions could they even have existed before cellular organisms?

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