Some Scientists Think SARS May Have Come from Outer Space

LONDON (Reuters) ^ | May 22, 2003 | Patricia Reaney

[TaxRelief]

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.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

From http://www.sitchin.com/primate.htm:


THE CASE OF THE GENETICALLY MODIFIED PRIMATE

"Ninharsag and her crew are closer to being vindicated as time passes, and soon your theories will no longer be theories!"

So wrote to me a fan (Jack Byrd in Virginia) in a congratulatory letter accompanying a newspaper clipping headlined "Genetically modified primate is world's first." It was the report about the successful birth of ANDi ('inserted DNA' spelled backward), a baby rhesus monkey "created" by a group of researchers at the Oregon Regional Primate Center, whose genetic makeup was modified to include the genes from a jellyfish that make it glow in the dark.

Mice have been previously genetically modified for medical research. But because the rhesus monkey is roughly 95 percent akin to humans genetically, "I think we are at an extraordinary moment in the history of humans, " said the chief researcher Dr. Gerald Schatten.

I was of course pleased to be congratulated. Yet, I wrote back to my fan with thanks coupled with an admonition. "While it is nice to get such reassuring compliments," I wrote to him, "I am trying to get my fans to write about it to others, and first and foremost to the newspapers that carried the reports. In this case, the Associated Press report stresses that it is the world's FIRST genetically modified primate; what a Letter to the Editor should point out is that according to Sumerian texts reported by Zecharia Sitchin in his books The 12th Planet and Genesis Revisited, ADAM was the first genetically modified primate, some 300,000 years ago!"

The news about the genetically modified rhesus monkey was just one item in an avalanche of reports on human genetics, cloning etc. in which the names of Enki and Ninharsag could well replace the names of Dr. Schatten, Dr. Phyllis Leppert (and their other modern colleagues). So please -- TELL IT TO THE NEWSPAPERS!

February 2001 Z. Sitchin

[Darksheare]

There are others out there who also write about it.
But in an ironic twist.
Heavy Metal magazine, of all things, had a graphic novelisation of a story where mankind is dying.
So man goes throughout the galaxy in search of ways to prolong our kind.
Eventually they find a suitable species on another planet and right before genetically modifying it, they find that sometime in the distant past, a high tech civilisation did the same to us.
So they attempt to strip the 'alien' DNA out and recreate the 'proto-human' to prolong mankind.
Everyone dies, but the experiment is automatic, and continues.
The experiment finishes, and the pod it is in motors out of a dropship on a suitable planet surface.
The door of teh pod opens, and out steps and angry macaque.

[Darksheare]

"The door of teh pod opens, and out steps and angry macaque."

I really should slowdown my typing.
It should read as:
"The door of the pod opens, and out steps an angry macaque."

[Calvin Locke]

Small Galaxy. More the shame, since there would be fewer opportunities for life to begin.

So, are you theorizing that somebody vocalized something that went through a random hole in space time and became the SARS virus, and somehow landed in China?

Stranger things have happened.

Speaking of strange, World of the Strange newsletter is sort of back. Website and Yahoo groups.

[Rushmore Rocks]

You write well. Is the "pale-ish lady" riding a horse?

[Darksheare]

Not theorising anything myself.
But I wouldn't be surprised more the same anymore.
This is a strange and disturbing universe we live in, and we understand and 'know' so very little about it.

I read an article awhile ago about pro-virii and wrote a short story about it.
It kinda tickled my humor to do so.
I honestly didn't expect it to be so.. thought provoking.

Now I'm seriously thinking of rewriting it to make it longer.
I am getting all kinds of ideas from this thread for it, and that may be a bad thing actually.

But that IS a particularly horrifying thought, if we are intellectual property- what is to keep our 'owners' fromdeciding we've outlived our usefulness and flipping the proverbial switch on us? Or, in our case in the story, we get too smart for our own good and do it ourselves?
Too many possibilities to chase down in a single storyline.

[Darksheare]

Actually, no.
In one story, she's driving a Toyota Celica GTS.
And the 'hero' of the story has recurring visits from her throughout his life, as if she's a friend.
Or worse.
Think I need to rework that one a bit before I put it back out there.

[muawiyah]

Not everything the Earth runs into is traveling 25,000 MPH (relatively speaking) Some of it's going the other way and the collision is remarkably gentle.

Then, again, we are talking about viruses and not bacteria. The Mars rocks with the bacteria are subject to dispute ~ more about the species than anything else. Viruses are far smaller.

[#3Fan]

Unless you are a scientist, you have no idea how difficult it is to communicate even simple ideas. If you want to leave me tongue-tied and speechless, make it perfectly clear that you don't understand the first concept of molecular biology, then ask me what I do.

If a person doesn't understand the first concept of molecular biology, then why would they be talking to a leader in the field about it? I still say a scientist should be accurate in his or her speech in an interview. Let the reader figure it out if the reader is that interested. Instead of saying "the fatty exterior would dry off in the atmosphere of space", a more accurate way of putting it would have been: "the fatty exterior would be worn off by the heat of the sun and the solar wind as it approached earth in space", or "the fatty exterior would've dried or burned up in earth's upper atmosphere" or something to that effect. I'll repeat for a third time that I think it's a poor choice of words for a scientist to assert that an atmosphere is in space. The heliosphere can't really be considered an atmosphere.

[goodseedhomeschool]

That is really interesting. I wonder if there are particular types of hops or barley in the beer that may help.

[exDemMom]

Well, since you can no more PROVE your THEORY than I can mine, the question remains, WHO'S THEORY IS RIGHT AND WHO'S IS WRONG? I know my theory sure has a lot better outcome than your does. Just because a theory is well established does not make it so as you so eloquently pointed out.

I use the established scientific definition of theory, which means that it is the best explanation of a large body of facts determined experimentally that not only explains the known facts, but can predict others. If you are interested in the facts which led to the development and refinement of the theory of evolution, may I suggest a google search, because there is too large a body of knowledge for me to post here. The lay person's definition of "theory" does not apply here; the scientific equivalent is "supposition." BTW, I don't know what "outcome" "my" theory supposedly leads to; an explanation of the world says nothing about morality, the future, spirituality, good, evil, or anything else other than the nature of the world.

Why is it so difficult to communicate? Do "scientists" corner the market on understanding ideas? Or, must they have the proper indoctrination to understand? Just a simple question. I am sure you are not implying that you are smart and the rest of us are stupid. That would just be plain rude. :)

It's difficult to communicate because I have spent something like 8 years studying the subject, and 6 years doing lab research in the field. No indoctrination, just a thorough understanding of intracellular processes, DNA/protein/lipid chemistry, etc. Unless you have also spent an ungainly amount of time studying the same subjects I have, you do not have the knowledge necessary to understand. No more than you would understand me if I started writing in French right now (unless you have also studied it and speak it fluently). So my choices are either to simplify (which can cause my explanation to be inaccurate even if technically correct) or to define each term as I go along (which, after the second or third definition, will cause your eyes to irrevocably glaze over). I am a firm believer that any idea in science should be communicable in at least a simplified form; it's just difficult to simplify adequately.

[exDemMom]

If a person doesn't understand the first concept of molecular biology, then why would they be talking to a leader in the field about it?

There are any number of reasons. For instance, I usually work late, so I have become friendly with the janitorial staff, none of whom know anything about biochemistry or molecular biology. But they are curious about the things they see me and other scientists doing when they come to clean, or about the equipment they see, and they ask questions. I can fully understand that scientist in the interview giving such a simplified explanation. Of course, I have enough background knowledge that I can pretty well surmise what is really going on at the molecular level, but for the lay persons, I see nothing wrong with the explanation as given.

[#3Fan]

She was needlessly innaccurate about the nature of space.

[meema]

I see what you mean!
This stuff is hard to read...

[Darksheare]

Yeah.
And I didn't help much with my fiction story...
Oops.

At least it did get some people thinking out of teh box about SARs.
There is the rumor going the rounds about how we've been working on a 'Super Flu' as a bio-weapon.
Personally, I wouldn't be surprised by it.
And I wouldn't be surprised to find that China has been working on something similar.
Makes me think of working on an "Andromeda Strain" style story where a bio-engineered bug gets loose and kills us all.

It is a good read though, this thread.
Takes time though, and coffee.

[meema]

LOLOL!

[meema]

Whoops. I forgot to add that I'm with you on the possible theory that China has 'accidently' let the SARS bug out of the lab.

The LOLOL was for your fiction. What a creative writer you are. Have you thought about applying at the nyt?

[Tijeras_Slim]

The space virus angle could account for this...

[Darksheare]

I knew.
No, I haven't thought of applying at the Grey lady..
They'd sniff me out as a conservative too quickly.
They'd lynch me like the angry villagers from frankenstein....

[spald]

D*mn. These Red Chinese will spew ANY type of misinformation to avoid responsibility for SARS. Outer Space my b*tt.

Hey guys here a hint for you. Segregate the avian and swine populations in the south. Over the last 50 years, the interspecies contributions have been deadly. It's like a teeming pool of RNA, bubbling up every couple of years. Enough is enough. You need a change of culture like the Great Leap Forward.