MR GEOFFREY F FOUNTAIN wrote:
>While on the road recently, I listened to an audio version of the book
>"The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston. According to the book's cover, this is
>a true story of an outbreak of e bola (sp ?) virus in Reston, Virginia.
(Snip Snip..)
> 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.
Recently I read Stuart Kauffman's book "At Home In the Universe". He
refers to this issue of a killer virus that mankind might encounter. It is
in a little different context but is a good testament of how a virus might
pose a problem to mankind. He is referring to the HIV virus in this
passage: "Rapid mutational alteration takes place in the growing
population of viruses within one HIV-positive person. We know this by
detailed DNA sequencing of the virus population from a single individual.
As with the organisms in the Cambrian explosion, or in postextinction
rebounds, rapid radiation of viral sequences appears to occur. One theory
suggests that this diversification is driven by the evolution of the
viruses to evade the immune response mounted to the HIV infection. The
antibodies are also evolving as the immune system tries to match the
virus. Again, molecular hide and seek. The human immune system and HIV
coevolve. Tragically, HIV currently has a deadly upper hand, for the cells
it happens to invade are the T-cells of the immune system itself. Attempts
to find rational therapies are, in part, based on trying to lock HIV
attachment and entry into helper T-cells. Unfortunately, HIV appears to
evolve within the host too fast to catch easily." (P. 216)
Thus, even though the HIV virus is deadly, it is forcing it's human host
to evolve, to acquire new information. What is the immune system but (And
this is my thought) a learning organization. To gain immunity to a virus,
we need to have been exposed to it. The more viruses we are exposed to,
the more we learn. HIV is such a deadly virus because it cripples the
ability to learn. The safety for the whole of mankind is that it is only
transferred via the exchange of body fluids.
This is not however, the greatest threat that Kauffman talks about. The
greatest threat is the loss of diversity in the environment. In the
following passage he uses a model of a stream of sand being piled on top
of itself. Some grains of sand create a taller pile, others set off an
avalache of sand. The following is a passage that defines this threat.
"Organisms and artifacts may evolve and coevolve in very similar ways.
Both forms of evolution, that crafted by the blind watchmaker and that
crafted by us, the mere watchmakers, may be governed by the same global
laws. Perhaps small and large avalanches of extinction events rumble
through economic systems with a power-law distribution. Perhaps small and
large avalanches of extinction events rumble through the biosphere.
Perhaps we all make our lives together, blindly self-tuning the games we
mutually play, the roles we mutually fulfill, to a self-organized critical
state. Our smallest moves may trigger small or vast changes in the world
we make or remake together. Trilobites have come and gone; Tyrannosaurus
has come and gone. Each tried; each strode uphill; each did its
evolutionary best. Consider that 99.9 percent of all species have come and
gone. Be careful. Your own best footstep may unleash the very cascade that
carries you away, and neither you nor anyone else can predict which grain
will unleash the tiny or the cataclysmic alteration. Be careful, but keep
on walking; you have no choice. Be as wise as you can, yet have the wisdom
to admit your global ignorance. We all do the best we can, only to bring
forth the conditions of our ultimate extinction, making way for new forms
of life and ways to be." (P. 242-243)
As humans expand over the earth, moving into some habitats, changing some
others, and causing the extinction of species after species. This results
in the reducing of the total knowledge stored in the collective DNA of
life on earth. At some point, since we are all realated in the food chains
of life, the co-existance web is broken and as one species dies others die
setting off an avalanche of extinction.
>From these threatening examples, there are some similarities between a LO
and all living things. Any other thoughts along this line?
-- Archie Kregear archiek@sco.comLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>