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.

[Brian S]

God sent it to us??????

That ain't funny though!

When God does decide to pull up "Earth's file", we just might be in a world of hurt. ;)

[Brian S]

I'm not going to dismiss it.

I remember some of the earlier reports, maybe not from so reliable sources, that spoke of a Chinese bio-lab "accident"...

[KDD]

IT CAME OUT OF THE SKY

Oh, it came out of the sky, landed just a little South of Moline.
Jody fell out of his tractor, couldn't b'lieve what he seen.
Laid on the ground and shook fearin' for his life.
Then he ran all the way to town screamin' it came out of the sky.

Well, a crowd gathered round and a scientish said it was marsh gas.
Spiro came and made a speed about raising the Mars tax.
The Vatican said, woe, the Lord has come, Hollywood rushed out an epic film
and Ronnie the Popular said it was a communist plot.

Oh, the newspapers came and made Jody a national hero.
Walter and Eric said they'd put him on a network TV show.
The White House said, put the thing in the Blue Room, the Vatican said,
no, it belongs to Rome
and Jody said, it's mine and you can have it for seventeen million.

Oh, it came out of the sky, landed just a little South of Moline.
Jody fell out of his tractor, couldn't b lieve what he seen.
Laid on the ground a shakin', fearin' for his life.
Oh, then he ran all the way to town screamin' it came out of the sky.

- John C. Fogerty

[Amerigomag]

My guess is that your point was that no one is even suggesting the obvious possibilty ... SARS was created in a lab.

[Exit148]

So what was the immediate cause of death? I wouldn't have taken a pained sip of my drink --- I would have chug-a-lugged the whole bottle!

[ZULU]

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

Professor Wickramasinghe is planning a field trip to study Yeti mating behavior in Nepal after he refines this theory.

How can a virus which requires an earthly host survive in space?? Get real Chandra.

[Darksheare]

That is a possibility, admittedly.
Our sci-boys have been rumored to be trying to genetically engineer a rather nasty version of the flu.
Not sure whether that is fact or not, but who knows.
Just look at how far tech itself has come.
We have transistors that are smaller than a flu virus itself.
We also have 'microscopes' that can see atoms. (Scanning tunneling microscope.)
So who knows what is out there.

[ohmage]

Survival captured by photographer

http://www.spacevirus.com/html/contact.html

[Exit148]

Look up in the sky!! It's an insect, it's a bug, -----it's Super SARS!

I shouldn't make fun of this horrible virus, but it seems to me that scientists seem so wary of what they say until they have proof. And then they come out with something like--- 'studies now show----'.

[buffyt]

I say if God wants to convince us that He is REAL all he has to do is remove oxygen from Earth for thirty minutes. We wouldn't last long, but we would know that He is GOD!

I also think SARS came from a biolab weapon gone wrong......

[Jhoffa_]

I remember some of the earlier reports, maybe not from so reliable sources, that spoke of a Chinese bio-lab "accident"...

Yeah, the best bio-weapon would be easily transmitted.. just like SARS.

It's isn't hard to imagine them being a little lax one day and before you know it, it's loose in the general population.

Bio-weapons make sense from a logistics standpoint also. I mean, everyone knows if you launch a nuke at the US, we're going to send you a little something via airmail in retaliation..

With something like this, OTOH.. who knows?

[aristeides]

Ping.

[buffyt]

That is what I still think it is, Chinese bio lab accident, or maybe, not even an accident. They are sure getting to see how a deadly disease spreads globally....

[Jhoffa_]

I liked your sci-fi piece, BTW.

[Darksheare]

I wrote that and left the reader to his imagination.
I put the "Oh yes, yes there are worse things than ebola in the world. And mankind carried this one in his own genetic code." line in there to give an idea what the people might be experiencing in the story.
And everything I've read states that ebola is pretty nasty in it's own right.

Not sure if I want to expand the story or not.
Not sure what i will do with it at all.
I wrote it a couple months back, based loosely off of a short article in PopSci about one Doc Geraud and his study of Pro-virii.
Hope the Doc won't get too upset that I stuck him in a fictional story.

[Darksheare]

Egads!
That's terrible!
*Chuckle*

Have to admit, it may end up being a little bigger, considering the amount of thought I'm being asked to devote to it now...

[goodseedhomeschool]

Art Bell fans would love this silly story

[blam]

I'm gonna sit out this one. LOL.

[#3Fan]

"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.

A "scientist" said this? It would "dry" in the "atmosphere" of space? It may freeze solid or disintegrate in the vacuum of space. Inaccurate choice of words at best.

[Consort]

It could have come from the melting polar ice after being dormant for eons, or from the many archeological digs in China and elsewhere. Maybe it's binary...two benign spores/bacteria/microbes/germs combining to make one lethal one.