Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: To Boldly Go...

The people most concerned about Back Contamination seem to be very ignorant on the subject...
R.L. — (archived)

For instance, Hoyle (and BD) claimed that some virus epidemics came from space... this indicates a serious lack of understanding of the nature of viruses.

Viruses evolve with their hosts/victims- they are HIGHLY specialized... many people dont know this, but an airborne strain of ebola broke loose in Reston, Virginia... it wiped out a group of monkies being held in quarentine... several humans in the facility tested positive for it, but developed no serious symptoms....

By pure luck the virus was specific to the monkies... It was harmless to humans...

viruses utilize the DNA of their hosts to reproduce, but this DNA is always evolving... viruses are great at keeping up with the changes...

We can get viruses from other mammals - though trans-species transmission is rare, it certainly happens... we also can get viruses from more evolutionally removed species but it gets rarer the more distant the relation is... I would wager that there is not a proven example of virus transmission to humans from a sea cucumber...

We are FAR more closely related to a sea cucumber than we are to anything in space- the idea that some extraterrestrial virus would be able to infect us is just silly. The people claiming this have watched the 'Andromeda Strain' to often and think its a documentary.

I am far more concerned about disease from samples from the Amazon than I am a sample from mars...

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