74mg

While at work yesterday I came in contact with one of my coworkers who is at the moment fighting a bad cold. Needless to say that after watching Contagion on wednesday I felt more than a bit uneasy. I do not want to ruin the plot for those of you who haven’t seen the movie but I will however say that it freaked me out. I mean some of the things that were said I was already aware of, but it was still scary to see it portrayed. It left me not wanting to touch any surfaces for fear of contracting a virus. I know this is kind of stupid but it only lasted for a night, while the movie was still fresh on my mind.

Influenza virus

It seems strange that we can be affected by the smallest of organisms. Viruses are very complex.  They exist in every ecosystem on Earth. Scientists and researchers have come to understand how they work, but have not yet  found a way to stop them. Viruses act in a very distinct way. They infect a host,invade the living cells and here they attack receptors for RNA synthesis. Once there, the host cell begins to translate and replicate viral RNA instead of it’s own RNA. Ultimately, it can be though of as the host cell becoming a virus producing factory. This is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to stop a virus, because it becomes part of its host so that it can replicate itself.  More detailed information  is provided in the following article. Virus Article . One thing that makes viruses unique is that they most often require a fluid medium for transportation and survival. If there is no such medium the virus cannot successfully thrive and go on to infect a host. 

How is is that something invisible to the naked eye can cause so much harm?

As of yet, there are ways to prevent certain strains of a virus from replicating but there is no cure for a viral infection. Once a virus is in an organism and has successfully replicated the virus might go into a dormant state where it is still in the body but not active. In other circumstance these organisms have the ability to alter their genetic makeup so that it can continue to survive inside its host. This is most often after antiviral drugs have been administered. This is one of the reasons why viral epidemics are so threatening to the human population. Even with the advance in the field of pharmaceuticals we have no real way of preparing ourselves for a viral attack.

I want to know what you think, is a viral attack  even possible?  What costitutes a viral attack? And would there be any way of containing it knowing the way that viruses can spread throughout a population?

Have there been instances before where this has been the case? In other words, have people used viruses before as a biological weapon?

               I am sure that there are numerous examples throughout history that can be thought of . I will only mention one that I know a bit about after reading Guns, Germs and Steel-The fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond.

This book focuses on why the rise of complex human societies unfolded differently on different continents throughout the last few thousand years.  The argument in the book is that societies have developed differently because of differences in continental environments, not in human biology. Although this book does not go into depth about virology, it does mention the impact that an unknown “germ” can cause to a population that has never encountered it before.

The example from modern times has been the colonization of the New World by Europeans, “Which resulted in conquest and numerical reduction or complete dissappearance of most groups of Native Americans(American Indians).” (Diamond, 67.)

For practical purposes we can say that the collision of the Old World with the New World societies beagan in 1492, with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean islands. These islands were densely populated with Natives. Although there  are native diseases that were unfamiliar to Europeans, the impact of new European diseases on Natives was far greater. “Smallpox, measles,influenza,typhus,bubonic plague,and other infectious diseases endemic in Europe played a decisive role in European conquest, by decimating manu peoples on other continents…..Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95 percent opf the pre-Columbian Native American population.” (DIamond, 77-78.)

Although today we have many drugs that can cure and prevent many of the diseases that decimated the Native American population, we can still draw an example from this case. In a population that has no immunity to a recently acquired virus there will undoubtedly be many deaths. There will be survivors aswell to carry on the acquired immunity and pass that on to their offspring. In this manner a population gains immunity and familiarity with certain pathogens.

I hope that history will not repeat itself in this case. There is a potential for an unknown virus to become a threat and decimate our population because as humans we do not have full control of nature. We still don’t know everything that is out there but continue to learn and explore. We have not discovered a way to wipe out viruses completely but we can slow them down. Hopefully that will be enough to  save our population if a viral attack were ever a threat.  I hope not to have freaked you out but this is what I was left thinking about  after watching Contagion.