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Is SARS From Mars?
lupulack writes "A news item at CTV.ca asks whether coronaviruses such as that implicated in SARS are in fact completely terrestrial in origin. It's not as clear cut as you might think !"
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The World Health Organisation are now saying it's likely to have originated in civet cats
I expect the author of the theory that 'The Lancet' printed in their letter page will now follow up with an equally believable theory that the cats flew here from Mars.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I read the original Lancet letter. It's the thinnest piece of reasoning I've ever seen published in a scholarly journal. The guy is apparently some kind of viruses-from-space kook, who believes that the fact that he's found microbes 40 km up means they're coming from space.
The worms survived Columbia because they were in a human-constructed container and they got lucky. Now if they were suggesting that viruses come down in the center of meteorites, that would be a plausible mechanism. But as far as I know, they're not. (And it wouldn't make much sense--viruses that have the same mechanisms (e.g. for RNA and its replication) as just about all other life on Earth, and are well-adapted to their hosts (the products of 4 billion years of evolution) and yet are of extraterrestrial origin. The chances are slim to none, with emphasis on none.)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
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I can't believe this got posted.
To put a couple of things straight first. Professor Wickramasinghe hasn't said that SARS comes from space. In the Lancet letter (free reg required), he says "With respect to the SARS outbreak, a prima facie case for a possible space incidence can already be made". Note the word "possible". Note the words "prima facie" (roughly="sufficient to warrant further investigation").
This isn't some crackpot who's just heard of SARS, can't understand epidemiology and therefore thinks it must have come from outer space without thinking things through. Along with Fred Hoyle, he's long been a proponent of panspermia - the theory that life originated in space, rather than on Earth.
There is plentiful evidence of complex organic molecules in cometary and interstellar material. The environment on periodically warmed comets is every bit as suitable for the generation of life as the alternative theory of the primordial soup. Organic compounds, quite tightly concentrated, intermittent energy, water. The theory is that life on Earth originated Out There, so it would be no surprise that DNA/RNA from space would fit earthly organisms - they share the same origins.
In his letter, Prof. Wickramasinghe estimates that "a tonne of bacterial material falls to Earth from space daily, which translates into some 10^19 bacteria, or 20 000 bacteria per square metre of the Earth's surface". It would be surprising if none of these found a viable host. On the rare occasion that there is a good match, a pandemic could result. We don't know if SARS started this way or not.
Note that meteors aren't involved. Nothing gets burned up on re-entry. The stuff just drifts in.
I don't know what the answer is, but I know that it's not as clear cut as some would like to think. It's just possible that data from Beagle2 this Christmas might help shed a little more light.
The masked palm civet cat in Southern China is largely a herbivore. When I was scouting in many years ago, the rangers in Hongkong forest park taught me how to spot these animals. They leave indigested seed/fruit skin with their faeces. They are dubbed as "fruit ferret" in the local language.... Having said that, when transforming to a largely urban life, there are lots of habits that needs to be given up. Some activities make perfect sense in farming society no longer apply in industrial region... I think the consumption of wild animal is one of the example... Hunting is probably the other... Both western and oriental society need to go through these phases.... give us some time.
Info on Civet Cat, Found to Have SARS
* TRAITS: Of the family Viverridae, the civet cat is a primarily nocturnal animal closely related to the mongoose. There are several species. Some are carnivores that live on the ground, while the animals with SARS in China are masked palm civets, which live in trees and eat fruit.