Are Viruses Alive? Or not.....?

I believe that viruses, are not alive, and yet they are. They are in between our definitions of living and non-living. They have many characteristics of life, and yet they lack some that would make them technically "alive". For instance; they reproduce (though only through using a cell to replicate itself), they respond to their surroundings, and they grow, but they do not use energy or have their own cells. They are simple beings that use host cells to run their primary functions, and so technically can not "live" on their own. So therefore, they could be alive, but do not have all the necessities of life, and so are kind of in the middle. It is certainly very puzzling...

Resources:
http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/yellowstone/viruslive.html 
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AjyfHkZ.7arQCjpdnEvtQRAjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20080818175050AAVzWEg 

Clostridium perfigens -- Gas Gangrene (Wanted Poster)

 

Cur. Ev. 3rd Quarter No 1

Current Event

Petra 6A

Science

Mrs. M.

http://www.macroevolution.net/scout-proteins.html#.T1j-5GFjL64

3/8/12

Good Bacteria, Bad Bacteria

             There are so many harmful bacteria, but there are also very helpful bacteria. When bad bacteria are attacking the body and causing sickness, there is the immune system which fights the sickness, but how on earth does the immune system know good from bad? Scientists from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have found a special white cell called macrophage, which is one of the first to find the harmful cells and kill them. They found that a protein called “NLRP7” finds out if a bacterium is good or bad. It kind of acts as a little “scout” that searches the different aspects of the bacterium and decides whether it’s good or not. Finally understanding how the body fights these little creatures could lead us to, in the future, maybe solving the problems of brain disease.

My Thoughts

            I think that it is amazing that this has been discovered. I found it really interesting to read, it was a topic that I found myself pulled into, probably because I like to understand things that go on in the world I live in. The fact that we might, one day, be able to cure brain disease excites me, but it also troubles me. Diseases of all sorts are on this Earth for a reason. If we suddenly cured all sicknesses and diseases in the world, not so many people would die! Yeah, I know, you’re probably all thinking: ‘But isn’t that a good thing?’ Well, let me ask you, how many people do we have in the world today? That’s right, 7 billion+. And how many more people would be added to that figure if there were tons of fewer deaths? That’s just something to think about when you’re reading things like this… J