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Viruses Infected By Viruses

Posted by samzenpus on from the hoist-with-its-own-petard dept.

SpaceAdmiral writes "Scientists have discovered a virus that can infect another virus. The fact that viruses can essentially get sick may change the debate over whether they are alive or not. Check out Nature for a slightly more technical article about the 'virophage.'"

4 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. here we go again by Estanislao+Mart�nez · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A lot of times in school, I was told viruses aren't alive because they can't reproduce. I always wondered if this would apply to eunichs or mule.

    For the debate over whether viruses are "alive" to make any sense, there has to be some literally essential difference between things that are alive and things that are not. The past 200 years or so of biology ought to have taught us that, contrary to what seemed evident to the ancients, there isn't any such essential difference. Organic matter is just a form of organization of inorganic manner. From the point of view of what the ancients knew, there was a huge gulf between everyday living beings and inert objects. From the point of view of what we know, there are many intermediate cases.

    So, instead of wasting time trying to decide whether viruses are "really" alive or not, you should just accept the fact that our knowledge today is advanced enough to show that the question--which we inherited from people who knew less than we do--is flawed.

    --

    Are you adequate?

  2. important medical discovery by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To me, the issue of how to define "life" is only a small side note to this discovery.

    Far more important are the consequences for medicine. Viruses can be attacked by other viruses. This is huge. Compared to bacteria, viruses have been very difficult to beat. Infectious bacteria can be combated by using anti-biotics, bacterio-phages and other means. Whereas viruses are significantly more hardy, and combating them directly is difficult. But this discovery opens the door to engineering virophages to attack viruses in our bodies that make us sick.

  3. Re:reproduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    makes it fairly easy for humans to "create life" in the form of self-reproducing machines.

    What's so easy about that? It's never been done! It would be a stupendous thing if it were.

  4. Re:cancer by LightPhoenix7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This bigger point being - while science may have come a long way, reporting of science in the media has not.