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 !"

Comments

Tinfoil hat time

[wowbagger]

This guy's reasoning seems to go something like this:

"This showed up all of a sudden, we've never seen anything like it, so it must be ALIENS! "

True, he is not suggesting that SARS is the first step of global domination by an actual extra-terrestrial intelligence, but he is saying that SARS came from a comet.

OK, let's break out Occam's razor. (strop, strop, strop. Hmmm, good and sharp.)

The explaination that requires the fewest ad-hoc assumptions is the most likely to be correct (as it has the fewest places to break).

Scenario 1: SARS is ET in origin. Required ad-hoc assumptions: there are viruses in space. Those viruses can infect humans. Those viruses can survive transport on a comet or other body from their point of origin and earth. None of those assumptions have much evidence to back them up.

Scenario 2: SARS is a naturally occuring virus that we have not seen before. Required ad-hoc assumptions: none.

OK, kids - which of these scenarios survives Occam's Razor?

Sorry

[smoondog]

I'm happy that science is alive and well in this world. Viruses, fortunately, are very likely not alive out of this world. I'm not even sure where these authors get off even suggesting that viruses come from outer space. Reasons:

1. Viruses are delicate. Being in outer space, crashing to earth, and infecting someone. A difficult task by itself.

2. Viruses evolve jointly with hosts. All evidence suggests that viruses have a very close (evolving) relationship with their hosts.

3. There are perfectly good theories with lots of evidence that explain new virus infections. For example, SARS may have come from a little evolution by a virus in a cat-like species of civet. It didn't help that the viruses new host happened to be a delicacy.

4. There may be lots of evidence that life exists outside of our planet, but (like #2) viruses require evolution from a similar host. That suggest the virus would have to get into space from earth first. That makes it extremely unlikely (IMO) that a virus could go to space get back and reinfect the same (or similar) species of host without being damaged.

5. Finally, (AFAIK) A VIABLE VIRUS HAS NEVER BEEN FOUND/CULTURED ON A METEOR!!!!

This theory is a little like suggesting that crop circles come from aliens even after the people who admitted building the first ones have come forward. It is possible, but very, very unlikely. (Personally, I hope that the rest of cosmological theories are attached to better evidence than this)

-Sean

Link to a more believable article

[Andy_R]

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.

Re:scenario 3

[neden]

The complexities of it also tend to suggest human manufactured.

I wouldn't use complexity as any sort of argument for a human's hand in this. If anything, I would argue that complexity would point away from an artificial source and towards a natural one.

For all our advances in understanding of molecular biology, we still know far less than we don't know, especially about protein structure and fuction. If we knew enough about that, then most diseases for which we have identified the genes involved would be cured by now. Sequencing genes is relatively easy, identifying what the gene does is harder, but figuring out exactly how the protein product of the gene actually works (and how a mutation affects that functioning) is by far the hardest.

Human intervention in creating a virus would most likely take the form of "let's take this gene from another virus or organism and put it in this other virus". Things like that aren't too hard to identify by DNA sequence analysis (relatively simple pattern matching, after all). I'm sure after they sequenced the DNA of the virus, they started comparing it to other known sequences. (Interesting side note - I actually had a class with one of the people who sequenced the virus DNA - he was taking a few qualifying courses before starting his grad studies in molecular biology, and I was finishing my undergrad in biochemistry. It was funny to see the name and recognize the face almost 12 years later.)

Is SARS from Mars?

[Strange Ranger]

Is your Brainus in Uranus?