Sunday, October 12, 2014

Don't be a Virist!


You can't condemn an entire form of life (?) based on the behavior of a radical few malcontents like Ebola, Variola, or EV-D68.  You need to shed your anthropocentric biases and embrace our little viral friends.


The photo above illustrates the friendly legions of viruses resident in your oral mucosa coming to your defense and attacking an unwanted bacterial invader.  While this behavior occurs naturally among our viral friends, phage therapy as a medical treatement was developed in the Soviet Union in the 1920's and is only currently approved for use in Russia and Georgia, but...

In 2006 the US FDA approved the use of ListShield  a product developed by Intralytix for spraying on meat to combat Listeria monocytogenes, so yes there is a virus in every bite.


Mmmm... Cowpea Mosaic Virus
Thomas Splettstoesser
Not only that but viruses, of which there are about a million in a teaspoon of seawater, are responsible for removing 3 Gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere a year.

So don't be a Virist!





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