It is believed this strain of e bola is a mutant of the e bola - Zaire
virus. The difference with this strain was its' seemingly ability to
travel through the air (the other viruses travel through body liquids).
Below is the epilogue of this story. This subject is new to me, so my
discernment of the facts from the opinions and the drama is lacking. The
epilogue is intriguing.
Epilogue
The emergence of aids, e bola, and any number of other rain forest
agents appears to be a natural consequence of the ruin of the tropical
biosphere. The emerging viruses are surfacing from ecologically damaged
parts of the earth. Many of them come from the tattered edges of
tropical rain forests. Or they come from tropical savannah that is
being settled rapidly by people. The tropical rain forests are the
deep reservoirs of life on the planet, containing most of the world's
plant and animal species. The rain forests are also its' largest
reservoirs of viruses, since all living things carry viruses. When they
come out of an ecosystem, they tend to spread in waves through the human
population, like echoes from the dieing biosphere. In a sense, the
earth is mounting an immune response against the human race. It is
beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of
people, the dead spots of concrete all over the planet, the cancerous
rot outs in Europe, Japan, and the US. Thick with replicating primates,
the colony is enlarging and spreading and threatening to shock the
biosphere with mass extinctions. Or it could also be said, that the
extreme amplification of the human race which has occurred only in the
past 100 years or so, has suddenly produced a very large quantity of
meat, which may not be able to defend itself against a life form that
might want to consume it. Nature has interesting ways of balancing
itself. The earth's immune system, so to speak, has recognized the
presence the human species and is starting to kick in. The earth is
attempting to rid itself of an infection by the human parasite. Perhaps
AIDS is the first step in a natural process of clearance. The AIDS
virus is a fast mutater. It changes constantly. This means that
vaccines for it will be difficult to develop. In a larger sense, it
means the AIDS virus is a natural survivor of changes in ecosystems.
The aids virus and other emerging viruses are surviving the wreck of the
tropical biosphere because they can mutate faster than any changes
taking place in their ecosystems. AIDS may not be nature's preeminent
display of power. Whether the human race can actually maintain a
population of 5 billion or more without a crash from a hot virus remains
an open question - unanswered. The answer to the question lies hidden
in a labyrinth of tropical ecosystems. To a rain forest virus, 5
billion people is a huge quantity of unexploited territory, wide open
to attack and lacking good defenses. If a killer virus traveled in the
air, it would move around the world in a few weeks or months, and there
would be no chance of a vaccine. It takes around ten years to develop a
new vaccine. The human species is starting to look like a plague,
wanting to happen. AIDS is the revenge of the rain forest. It is only
the first act of the revenge.
-- Geof Fountain tfyy93a@prodigy.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>