Some Scientists Think SARS May Have Come from Outer Space

LONDON (Reuters) - Could SARS have come from outer space? Some scientists think so.

Instead of jumping from an unknown animal host in southern China, a few researchers in Britain believe the virus that has baffled medical experts descended from the stratosphere.

"I think it is a possibility that SARS came from space. It is a very strong possibility," Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe told Reuters.

The director of the Cardiff Center for Astrobiology in Wales and a proponent of the theory that life on Earth originated from space, admits the theory defies conventional wisdom.

But in a letter published in The Lancet medical journal on Friday he and his colleagues argue there are too many puzzling aspects about the respiratory illness that has killed nearly 700 people and infected more than 3,800 to dismiss the idea.

Other virologists believe it simply isn't possible because the virus is too fragile to survive in outer space.

"I think it is completely nuts," said Dr Anne Bridgen, a molecular virologist at the University of Ulster.

"It has a lipid (fatty) coat on the outside and it would tend to dry out in an atmosphere such as space," she told Reuters.

Professor Ian Jones, an expert in virology at the University of Reading in southern England, described the idea as bizarre.

"SARS is a new virus but it is only a new relative of a family of viruses that we understand quite well," he said, referring to the coronavirus family which includes a virus linked to the common cold.

"The difference is that it is a causing a severity of disease that we haven't seen before in the human population."

Wickramasinghe stressed that SARS suddenly appeared in China late last year and is a new coronavirus with a different genetic sequence from similar viruses in animals. Its origin has also not been traced. He believes these factors could suggest it evolved differently and may have come from a far-off place.

"There doesn't seem to have been a human origin for this. It seems to have come from somewhere else," said Dr Milton Wainwright, a molecular biologist at the University of Sheffield in England and a co-author of the letter.

"There is a lot of debate about where it could have come from and we are providing an answer," he added.

Wickramasinghe said there is no known virus that has fallen from outer space. "There is no known virus that has been picked up from high in the stratosphere," he said. "Not to date."

Yet Wickramasinghe and Wainwright believe the original outbreak in China is also significant because if the virus did fall to Earth it would most likely land east of the Himalayas, the weakest point in the stratosphere and easiest to break through.

In studies of air samples taken from 25 miles above the Earth, large numbers of micro-organisms were found, Wickramasinghe said, so it is possible SARS came from space.

"The fact that many cases in China cannot be traced to infected people means that something is dreadfully amiss in the idea of conventional wisdom," he said.

I'll leave the tinfoil stuff to the tinfoil dudes.
But, other than that, I'll do a Sci Fi twist to it:

Who would have thought that mankind would kill themselves in this fashion?
Perhaps I should back up a bit in my story. I'll just take a small, pained sip of my drink and recall the promise of a few years time passing us by:

I remember it well. I had been at an exposium on DNA and pro-viruses in the human genome listening to a Dr. Geraud speak on what these pro-viruses do. The doctor had quoted an expert in the field on a link between a certain pro-virus and some forms of schizophrenia. The researcher had found pro-virus dna in the blood of several patients, meaning that the pro-virus was active. But he didn't know how a small segment in the DNA could become active by itself like that, nor did he know the mechanisms behind it.
Then Dr. Geraud stunned the crowd. He stated that he had researched the human DNA and discovered what appeared to be bio-engineered sections in our own DNA. Silence followed for a few minutes as the throngs of scientists and reporters digested the implications of this. Then silence was followed by laughter and mockery.
Who would have thought it? Humans bio-engineered? Pure tripe! They all said so. But they were all so desperately wrong. I laugh now to think of it. But the doctor, the poor fool, let loose his next fusilade at the walls of intellectual superstition and let it be known that he'd identified a few of the 'useless' sections of our DNA as actually being useful when turned on. And he let it be known that he'd actually activated a few of those sections in some of his subjects in tests.
At first, the scientific community went insane with rage. A few dared to say that the doctor was playing God. Poor sick fools, they all denied His existence, and now they invoked Him as a King Arthur to the doctor's Mordred. But years passed, and research went on, as it always does. And the promise of a new era in medicine came to light. They found dormant DNA sections that could be used to repair unheard of damage to the body. They found out how to make the nerves fire faster, making boxing an even more difficult sport where the combatants already had a hard time seeing the movements of the other. But then, then they found a section of DNA that was even more complex than anything they'd found so far. And just as dormant as the others. They studied it for a year, and modeled the section, and postulated it's uses.
And then the folly of it all came to pass. They activated the section. Remember the viruses I mentioned earlier? Oh yes, yes there are worse things than ebola in the world. And mankind carried this one in his own genetic code. Schizophrenia was a warning to us. A warning not to activate the dormant sections in our DNA. Fools! All of us... And it was there all the time. And we did it to ourselves. The ones who engineered us didn't have to put us down. They merely had to wait and we'd do it ourselves, once we got smart enough to.
And we died. All of us. By the millions we dropped. Dead as the lake in Utah. And so I sit here and wait for my own end, with my drink and my time dripping away from me. I wait for them to come and see the end of what they started all that time ago when they engineered us for our own destruction.
I wish I knew what the doctor thought of al....

In studies of air samples taken from 25 miles above the Earth, large numbers of micro-organisms were found, Wickramasinghe said, so it is possible SARS came from space.

Glad to see that education systems besides ours have collapsed. Microorganisms from the surface can stay aloft for a long time, brought by sandstorms, winds, etc.

The shorter wavelengths of UV (Below about 260 nm) are called the "Vacuum Ultraviolet" because they do not penetrate the atmosphere and are not found at the surface. They are wonderful for sterilizing clean rooms, etc. because _they kill pathogens_.

Near space is an inferno of radiation and free radicals...UV, cosmic rays, solar wind, ozone, and atomic oxygen. If SARS can only live a day or two exposed to sea level atmosphere, there is no possibility it arrived from space, and little possibility it would be opportunistic on mammals if it did.

What we have here is a paper desperate for stories, and possibly a drug-addled or mercury poisoned mental defective. The mere fact that this appeared in print, anywhere except _The Onion_, _Mad Magazine_, or _The Lampoon_ is a disgusting commentary on our times. Were the theory not propounded by an utter imbecile, I would call it a blasphemy against Science.

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