Viruses are an undeclared war on humanity. Where do new viral infections come from?
Particularly dangerous
According to some estimates, there are more than 1000 infectious diseases in the world. Among them, the World Health Organization (WHO) identifies a group of so-called Particularly Dangerous Infections. This group includes 20 infectious diseases characterized by sudden onset, high contagiousness, rapid spread, mass infection populations that are difficult to treat, and also occur in a severe form and with high mortality. The causative agents of most Particularly Dangerous Infections are VIRUSES. These are primarily Ebola fever, Dengue fever, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, smallpox and rabies, the mortality rate of which reaches almost
100 %!!!
I have already written about the smallpox pandemic. The Spanish flu pandemic at the beginning of the 20th century claimed different estimates, about 15 million lives!!!
But even in our age of developed science and medicine, according to rough estimates, several million people die every year from various viral diseases, including influenza, hepatitis, AIDS, myocarditis!!! In 2007 alone, 2 million deaths were reported from HIV-related diseases.
In addition, viruses can cause cancer. Oncoviruses that can cause cancer in humans include human papillomavirus (can cause cancer of the cervix, skin, genital organs), hepatitis B and C virus (liver cancer), Epstein-Barr virus(Burkitt's lymphoma), herpesvirus (Kaposi's sarcoma and lymphoma), human T-lymphotrophic virus (T-cell leukemia), etc...
Some researchers claim that bornavirus, previously considered the causative agent of neurological diseases in horses, also causes psychiatric disorders in humans...
So what are VIRUSES and why did they declare war on us? Let's figure it out.
Opening
Viruses were first discovered and isolated in 1898 by M. Beyerinck. The word “virus” itself is derived from Lat. virus - “poison”. Over the past hundred-plus years, more than 5 thousand types of viruses have been studied and described in detail. But virologists say that this is “a drop in the ocean,” since there are hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions of species. Viruses are found in every ecosystem on Earth, being one of the most numerous biological forms. And the more scientists study viruses, the more and more disputes arise about what a virus is and how they appeared on Earth.
Despite the primitiveness of their structure, or perhaps because of it, viruses are the most numerous form of existence of protein matter on Earth, and in this indicator they surpass all organisms combined. Viruses infect all forms of cellular life, including animals, plants, bacteria and fungi. At the same time, some types of viruses affect only a limited range of hosts, that is, they are species specific. For example, the smallpox virus can only infect one species—humans. Other viruses have a wide host range and are not species specific. For example, the rabies virus can infect different kinds mammals. As a rule, plant viruses are harmless to animals, and vice versa. Some viruses, called satellites, can only replicate in cells that have already been infected by another virus. For example, the hepatitis D virus can only replicate in cells already infected with the hepatitis B virus.
The ways of transmitting a viral infection from a sick organism to a healthy one are also very diverse. The most common method of infection is through direct contact with a sick person or animal, its saliva or blood. This is how herpes, hepatitis C, smallpox, rabies, AIDS, Ebola fever, etc. are transmitted. But it is not necessary to have contact with a sick person to catch the virus. It is enough to stand two meters from a sneezing person infected with the influenza virus. Besides, viral disease can be acquired by drinking contaminated water or food, such as hepatitis A. And even insects are carriers of viruses. Dengue fever can be transmitted through a mosquito bite. There is also a so-called “vertical” method of transmission - from mother to newborn child. This is how hepatitis B virus and HIV are transmitted.
In the service of humanity.
With the development of modern science and technology, humanity has greatly benefited from the ability of viruses to penetrate cells and transfer genetic information. All greater application viruses are found during biological and genetic research. Pharmaceutical companies have used viruses to synthesize new types of vaccines, antigens and anti-infective drugs. In addition, by learning to copy the viral structure, scientists have made significant progress in molecular electronics, nano technologies and materials science.
Biological weapons
The ability of viruses to cause devastating epidemics in humans has raised concerns that viruses could be used as biological weapons. Recently there was information that it was possible to recreate the highly lethal Spanish flu virus in laboratory conditions. We should not forget that although smallpox is considered eradicated from the planet, samples of the smallpox virus have not yet been destroyed, but are stored in laboratories in Russia and the USA. No less dangerous are new, artificially synthesized viruses.
Some virologists, for example, continue to insist that the viruses that cause untreatable AIDS and Ebola were developed by the military and precisely as deadly biological weapons.
And now the situation on the African continent with Ebola is very tense...
Ebola fever in Russia.
On May 5, 2004, Antonina Presnyakova, a laboratory assistant at the Department of Particularly Dangerous Infections of the Vector Research Institute of Virology and Biotechnology, who had worked at this institute for more than 20 years, went to work as usual, but never returned home. In the evening, her family called and said that an accident had happened to her. Two weeks later, the family was informed that Antonina Presnyakova had died. What happened on that fateful day for her? On the morning of May 5, Antonina Presnyakova came to work. After the mandatory briefing and medical examination, she changed into a special protective suit, put on special two-layer polymer gloves and got to work. The laboratory assistant's duties included conducting experiments with guinea pigs infected with the Ebola virus. During the experiment, the laboratory assistant accidentally pricked herself with a used syringe needle. The woman was immediately isolated in a special bunker at the Research Institute of Virology and Biochemistry "Vector", the wound was disinfected, and heterogeneous gamma globulin against Ebola fever was administered intravenously. However, it was not possible to stop the development of the fever. The best specialists from the Russian Ministry of Health and foreign scientists who took part in the treatment of patients during the epidemic in Africa were involved in the treatment of the laboratory assistant. However, despite all the measures taken, Antonina Presnyakova died on May 19. She was buried in a closed zinc coffin using special technology: to prevent the spread of the virus from the grave, the body and coffin were treated with special preparations, the name and composition of which is a state secret.
Nanobots?
Some scientists suggest that viruses are nanorobots brought to Earth by alien intelligence. And although at first glance this statement looks fantastic, if you analyze all the currently known data, it will no longer look so incredible. Already, human science is on the verge of creating the simplest nanorobots, which are sometimes also called “artificial viruses.” Let us recall that nanorobots (or nanobots) are hypothetical, non-living devices several nanometers in size that carry out a specific program laid down at the molecular level, capable of independently manipulating individual molecules and self-reproducing under certain conditions. Doesn't remind you of anything? That's right - these are VIRUSES! Having nanosizes and a geometrically regular structure (mostly spiral, icosahedral or complex). The growth of viruses at some stages resembles the growth of crystals. By penetrating a cell, viruses are able to manipulate molecules and self-replicate. And for millions of years now, they have been carrying out the same program - they regulate the balance of living organisms on Earth (and the human population too).
So maybe these microscopic creatures really are not a random zigzag of evolution, but a biotechnological manifestation of a higher intelligence superior to human...
Think about it!
Viruses are the cause of infectious diseases and epidemics. As ancient as life. They are called the cause of evolution and “the instrument of God”; they “created” man, but they can also destroy him. Especially if they are used as weapons.
Emergence
Viruses are ubiquitous. They are able to survive both in the depths of the ocean and at bird's eye level. They are not hampered by either high or cold temperatures. To exist, they need only one condition - someone else's life. And it doesn’t have to be a person or an animal; one cell, bacteria, or even another virus is enough, where the infectious agent can multiply.
However, none of the above hypotheses is applicable to all known to man viruses. And yet, based on the composition of some viral organisms, scientists suggest that viruses are among the most ancient organisms that originated on earth. A bitter “joke of nature” - as soon as life arose, death appeared.
The main engine of evolution
And yet, some scientists see viruses not as time bombs, but as the main engine of evolution. According to the so-called “virological theory of evolution,” if not for viruses, animal world it would remain at the level of single-celled individuals. Their merit lies in the fact that when infecting one organism, say a plant, the virus borrows genes from it and transfers it to the next living organism upon contact. And the latter are already adapting them for their own purposes. Thus, thanks to viral infections, mammals acquired a temporary organ, the placenta, which takes nutrients from the mother’s body and transfers them to the embryo. In other words, it was thanks to viruses that humans, many mammals and fish acquired the ability to bear children.
According to scientists, what was created in nature and worked well will never disappear. For example, the hemoglobin gene, which once appeared in dinosaurs, was transmitted via viruses to plants, insects, animals and, finally, humans. And it serves completely different purposes: in humans and animals to transport oxygen, in plants it is a transport protein in the roots.
Retrovirus is a tool of God
Among the viruses, the most dangerous for humans is the so-called retrovirus, which infects mainly vertebrates. This is the only virus that has the ability to transfer its information from RNA to DNA and vice versa. Believing scientists dubbed it “an instrument of God,” since it was the retrovirus that was the main acting force in "viral evolution".
Ironically, it is the retrovirus that is the cause of many chronic, incurable and often fatal human diseases. The infamous HIV also belongs to this genus of organisms. Also, the “merits” of retroviruses include many cases of cancer.
Hot spots of the planet
Despite the fact that a virus fatal to humans can appear anytime and anywhere, there are special areas on Earth with a “favorable” environment for its spread. And recently, scientists managed to create a map of the planet’s “hot spots” where a new “plague” should appear. Basically, these are zones with a humid tropical climate: the mouth of the Niger River in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Hindustan. The situation may worsen due to the fact that it is in these areas that primary indication, identification of viruses and the development of any methods of influencing them are not actually practiced.
By the way, there is also one dangerous point on the territory of Russia - the Far Eastern regions, which have always been a hotbed of occurrence of many diseases, especially those transmitted by insects. According to researchers, Russia cannot be called a virus-safe area at all. The absence of hot spots on the territory of our country is so far only the result of the fact that Russia is in in this regard not studied.
Pandemic – dance of death
If a person is always surrounded by deadly viruses, then how can we explain the order of epidemics? According to scientists, the causes of pandemics can be completely different: a mutating virus for which the human immune system has not had time to develop a “remedy,” or the emergence of an infection in a society that has been isolated from it for a long time. By the way, European colonists often became the cause of mass diseases among the indigenous population of the conquered territories, since they turned out to be more resistant to many viruses than the Indians and Negroids.
Another consistent cause of the largest pandemics in human history is physical and climate change. Thus, the notorious “Black Death” - bubonic and pneumonic plague, which wiped out most of the population of medieval Europe (about 60 million people) was preceded by global climatic cataclysms. In Europe, as a result of the eruption of Mount Etna in 1333, the weather was warm and damp. Several years before the great disaster began, heavy rains and floods occurred in France and Germany, accompanied by crop failure, locust infestations and livestock pestilence. Such environmental conditions created a favorable atmosphere for life dangerous virus, and the raging famine brought hordes of rodents - the spreaders of the disease - closer to people's homes.
Of course, such processes cannot but cause concern among virologists. The 20th and 21st centuries have already shown themselves to be “climatically unstable.” Volcanic eruptions, major floods, earthquakes, climate change and, finally, the threat of global warming - all this creates ideal conditions for the emergence of a new pandemic. AND viral activity this proves: over the past 65 years, the number of new and mutating viruses infecting humans has increased 4 times.
Weapons of mass destruction
Epidemics have claimed more human lives than all other natural phenomena. More than war. Pandemics of plague, typhus, smallpox and cholera devastated entire territories and claimed millions of lives. Such “victorious” statistics could not help but give rise to the idea of using viruses as biological weapons. And, despite the 1972 international convention banning the development, production and stockpiling of biological weapons, the possibility of an artificially caused epidemic today raises concerns even among experts.
And they are not groundless. For example, the smallpox virus, which today is considered destroyed in the natural environment, is still stored in laboratories in Russia and the USA. At the same time, despite the availability of a vaccine, most of the world's population is not vaccinated, since the vaccine is characterized by serious consequences. In recent years before the officially declared eradication of the virus more people got sick from the vaccine than from the virus.
Biologists are still arguing about what viruses are, whether they are living creatures or dead matter. Encyclopedic dictionaries openly admit: now science does not quite understand the nature of these creatures, does not know how and where they came from.
Researchers so far agree that viruses are a special form of matter. What makes it possible to consider them alive is that they contain organic molecules, that they have their own genome, and that they can reproduce. However, they are capable of living and reproducing only inside someone else’s body, a foreign cell. Outside of it, these are quite easily dead inert crystals, heaps of molecules.
On this moment About two thousand types of viruses have been discovered. Supposed. that this is only a very small part of them. Viruses are constantly mutating, and new varieties appear from somewhere. often causing deadly diseases such as mad cow disease, bird flu, Ebola, AIDS and others.
These ruthless cell killers seem so alien to everything terrestrial that many scientists who study them very seriously claim that viruses came to Earth from deep space. Their actions really look like episodes from horror films about an attack by representatives of an extraterrestrial civilization. A monstrous-looking dwarf bites into a giant, unsuspecting cell, dissolves its shell and screws a “spring” into it - its DNA. This spring gives the cell its own program, thereby changing all its work. The unfortunate affected cell forgets about its original responsibilities and begins to churn out more and more new viruses from the resulting matrix, bringing death to neighboring cells.
Representatives of one of the varieties of viruses - bacteriophages (bacteria eaters) - even look like a space module made for landing on an alien planet for the purpose of taking soil samples. The bacteriophage releases peculiar “support posts” with which it is firmly attached to the victim, and after that it plunges its drill into it.
Viruses don't need food. They do not consume or assimilate it. As researchers admit, in their structure, viruses are more similar to primitive mechanisms that pursue one single goal: to search for living cells and integrate into them. But by whom, when and why was such a task assigned to them? Experts do not even dare to think about this issue.
In 2008, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences S. Zhmur proposed his own hypothesis of the origin of life on Earth. In his opinion, the main ancestor of all living things was not cells, or even bacteria, but viruses, which originated in the circumsolar space about five billion years ago.
After the explosion of a certain supernova, huge masses of stellar matter were thrown into space, from which a gas and dust cloud was subsequently formed, and from it then the planets of the Solar System. Heat this substance contributed to the formation of cyanides in it - chemical elements, which represent the basis for the creation of the simplest hydrocarbons. The next stage consisted of the appearance of hydrocarbon-based enzyme proteins and peptide proteins, which then led to the synthesis of nucleic acid molecules. And this, in turn, allowed the formation of RNA and DNA, which “created” for their protection from harmful external influences peptide shell. This is how a structure arose that is nothing more than the virus we are familiar with.
It turns out that five billion years ago the gas and dust cloud of the future solar system was not dead matter, but a substance saturated with the simplest viruses (remember the traces of microorganisms in the lunar soil and meteorites four and a half billion years old!). Subsequently, the Earth and other planets were formed from it, which initially contained the germs of life in the form of viruses.
The further evolution of viruses on Earth took place thanks to water, which penetrated into them through the peptide shell. Some types of viruses swelled, their protoplasm formed, and their genetic apparatus became more complex. All this led to the division and. ultimately, the emergence of a full-fledged bacterial cell, which marked the beginning of life on the planet.
Zhmur does not exclude the possibility of an even more ancient origin of viruses. They were able to arise in the matter formed immediately after the Big Bang. And from this it follows that the age of these microscopic creatures is almost equal to the age of the Universe. That is, it turns out that a single living substance is spread everywhere in space, capable of giving rise to life on any celestial body suitable for it.
Some scientists go even further, believing that viruses are biorobots artificially created by someone, which came to Earth billions of years ago along with organic embryos. The purpose of the biorobot viruses was to serve these embryos. Russian scientist M. Daryanenko suggests that biorobot viruses were designed to ensure the necessary course of evolution, connecting in a certain sequence with the cells of living organisms and introducing into them necessary programs DNA. But over millions of years of their activity, something went wrong, and viruses turned from servants of cells into their killers. It is possible that the biorobot viruses decided: life on Earth did not follow the scenario prescribed for it by the program. And the experiment needs to be curtailed, clearing the planet for new experiments.
The question of the origin of viruses, in the opinion of most researchers, is still not paramount. The main thing is to understand what viruses are, how to coexist with them, how to fight them. We learned about viruses recently - only 100 years ago, but we learned to actually work with them only in the middle of the last century.
More recently, biologists believed that they had finally discovered patterns in the structure of viruses and their mechanism of action. But the epiphany came in 1992, when an amazing, unlike anything else object was found in an amoeba caught in the water of an industrial reservoir in England. It is 40 times larger in diameter than known viruses, but is not a bacterium. Biologists recognized it as a virus, calling it mimi - because of its mimicry, or disguise as a bacterium.
Man is approximately two million years old. The age of viruses, by all estimates, is estimated at billions of years. Moreover, they can exist in a “preserved” state indefinitely. In fact, viruses are immortal. Deciphering our genome has shown that it is full of remnants of ancient viruses. They occupy almost 10 percent of the human genome. Why these remnants are there is still unknown. Similar questions science began to be discussed only in very recent years.
“Human civilization has seen viral diseases throughout history that have claimed millions of lives,” says Robert Shope, director of the Yale Virus Laboratory. - It often seemed that humanity was on the verge of complete destruction. But every time everything worked out more or less well. The viruses were receding. Is this a coincidence? Or was it programmed this way from the very beginning, from the moment life appeared on Earth?”
Between life and death
Viruses
I think computer viruses can be called life. Life created artificially by people has turned out to be extremely destructive, and this says a lot about you and me. We created life in our own image and likeness.
Stephen Hawking
The fictional relatives of ruthless predators may well be kind: the wolf helps Ivan Tsarevich, the snake teaches Mowgli wisdom and patience... Viruses are perhaps the only representatives of the fantastic bestiary that fully deserve the title “instruments of death.” It is impossible to come to an agreement with them, they are difficult to manage and even more difficult to deal with the consequences of such “management”.
Stock up on microscopes, respirators and vaccines. We go to visit the smallest killers of two worlds - real and fictional. Particles of the genome, visible only under a thousandfold magnification, can cause trouble on the scale of an entire planet. Meet their microscopic viruses! From herpes and Trojan to Ebola and zombie outbreaks.
Shape of Death
The sizes of viruses range from 20 to 300 nm*. The largest viruses - for example, cowpox - can be seen with a light microscope, since their size is comparable to small bacteria.
Nanometer = 10 -9 m.
From the ashIn 2006, French scientists, using traces of the genome of an ancient virus in human DNA, were able to revive the virus that affected our ancestors 5 million years ago. It was called "Phoenix". With its help, it is planned to study the relationship between viral infections and cancer tumors. The resurrection of dangerous viruses is a very sensitive issue. In 2005, scientists recreated the infamous Spanish Flu, which killed about 50 million people in 1918. It is interesting that two of the three children who were given a vision of the Virgin Mary near the Portuguese village of Fatima on May 13, 1917, died from the Spanish flu. Survivor Lucia de Santos became the only witness to the miracle. From her words, the famous “three secrets of Fatima” were written down - in particular, that Russia should be returned to the Christian faith as soon as possible, otherwise the world will be very sorry. Who knows - if not for the Spanish flu, perhaps the prophecies would have been less anti-Russian? |
But scientists have not given up hope of putting viruses at the service of humanity. Their ability to target only certain cells could be used to fight cancer. The same HIV can be “targeted” to a cancerous tumor. Two years ago, Israeli microbiologists developed a modified avian Newcastle virus that attacks brain tumor cells (glioblastoma). Geneticists use virus-like constructs as a tool to deliver the desired genes into the cell.
Finally, viruses with their natural “programs” for building complex biological constructs are the most obvious way of self-organization of nanoparticles. This is one of the main problems of nanotechnology. In other words, viruses can become “engineers” of mechanisms that can only be seen with a microscope.
Microbiology of fiction
A viral infection does not necessarily mean death. Sometimes it can be worse than death. Or better yet, it depends on how you look at it. Fantastic viruses are capable of causing powerful mutations, giving people superpowers and disfiguring them so that the resulting creatures can be automatically labeled as villains.
This is exactly what happened with FEV(forced evolutionary virus, forced evolution virus) from the game series Fallout. The military development left over from the Great War was very useful to the scientist Richard Moreau. With the help of FEV, he created an army of super mutants, which could only be fought by fighters of the Brotherhood of Steel, and he himself became the Master - a powerful telepath who dreams of mutating all of humanity.
Remember when you were in last time Have you seen “magic” zombies on the screen, brought to life by voodoo magic? It just so happens that most of the living dead owe their existence to some kind of chemistry (trioxin from the Living Dead series by Romero) or a virus. The most a clear example the last case can be considered " resident Evil».
The main misfortune of this film series is T-virus, developed based on the Ebola virus. It causes irreversible mutations in the victim’s body and rebuilds cells to provide autonomous energy. The result is powerful necrosis of living tissues (in fact, transformation into “dead bodies”) and the revival of the dead. Thinking abilities drop to minimum level. A side effect of this transformation is extreme aggressiveness and thirst for human flesh.
The T-virus can also be used to create super soldiers - for example, Nemesis or Alice. In the latter case, the mutation is clearly benign in nature - the girl is very strong, dexterous, tenacious and demonstrates steadily growing telepathic abilities.
Virus " Fury"(Rage) from the duology " 28 days (weeks) later“didn’t turn people into zombies, but it didn’t make it any easier for them. “Rage” is transmitted through bodily fluids and engulfs the victim in just a few seconds: the capillaries in the eyes burst, blood gushes from the throat (infecting those around him), and the infected person loses his mind and attacks healthy people. It has been noted that people with heterochromia - unequal coloring of the irises of the eyes - are immune to “Rage”. They become carriers of the disease, but do not suffer from its symptoms.
| This is interesting |
|
In West Africa, more than 4,500 people have already become victims of Ebola. Since the beginning of October, reports of patient deaths and cases of infection with the virus have increasingly come from the United States and Europe. Where do viruses come from? Let's find out. But first, a tough report from the epicenter of the fight against Ebola.
300 pairs of gloves, 35 protective suits, goggles, surgical masks, hand sanitizers and countless rolls of duct tape - this is what Getty Images photographer Daniela Berehulaka was equipped with as he spent five long weeks in the epicenter of the Ebola virus outbreak, Monrovia, the capital. Liberia. A series of shocking images documenting the spread of the Ebola virus, which has already killed more than four thousand people, was published in the New York Times. See tragic photographs that depict the fear and suffering of people who, unfortunately, due to religious beliefs, themselves contribute to the spread of this terrible disease.
1. On August 22, 2014, photographer Daniel Berehulak arrived in Monrovia to show the world that the epidemiological situation in that region was out of control. He spent five weeks there - a very long period to work in such dangerous conditions. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
2. According to the photographer, most reporters come here for five to ten days, and everyone is very nervous due to the great pressure and restrictions. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
3. Daniel Berehulak told how he and reporter Norimitsu Onishi visited a house where a woman infected with the Ebola virus was dying, surrounded by her loved ones. She bled to death in front of everyone, but her family claimed it had nothing to do with Ebola. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
4. That day they visited 7 more houses where Ebola patients had died, and each time their families claimed that it was not Ebola. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
5.
The religious beliefs of these people contribute to the spread of the virus with terrible force. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak). 
6. According to the author of these images, in most cases, families do not take any precautions, and the virus is in an environment where it can easily spread, especially in Monrovia, where the population density is very high. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
7. Daniel Berehulak believes that the Ebola virus epidemic is out of control. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
8. The photographer had to strictly follow all safety rules and be very vigilant. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
9. The photographer also spent a lot of time in one of the Doctors Without Borders centers where local staff were trained. He observed how the staff of this non-governmental organization prepared for work in the zone increased danger. They learned to “hide any part of the body so that only the eyes were visible under protective glasses.” (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
10. The only way to protect yourself from infection is to strictly follow all safety rules and learn to undress after returning from contaminated areas. This is the only way to reduce the risk of infection. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
11. After a long day of work, during which the doctors have seen many heartbreaking scenes and are very tired, they must ensure that all equipment, instruments, and equipment go through the process of washing in a chlorine solution. This the only way reduce the risk of contracting Ebola. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
12. Having visited areas infected with the Ebola virus, the photographer now understands that despite the presence of Doctors Without Borders there, many people will die there. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
13. The photographer sees only fleeting signs of hope that it will soon be possible to localize the outbreaks of the virus and prevent an epidemic. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
14. Now doctors can save only some patients, but they help the majority to die with dignity. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
15. Despite active work doctors in the outbreak areas, the most big problem is the denial of the local population that the Ebola virus is real. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
16. The treatment centers in Monrovia are overcrowded, people are dying in front of them, but at the same time they refuse to believe that it is Ebola. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
17. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of people infected with Ebola could reach 1.4 million by January, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"It's my duty as a photographer to help raise awareness of what a terrible situation this is," Daniel Berehulak told Time. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak).
Where do viruses come from?
Viruses are the cause of infectious diseases and epidemics. As ancient as life. They are called the cause of evolution and “the instrument of God”; they “created” man, but they can also destroy him. Especially if they are used as weapons. Viruses are ubiquitous. They are able to survive both in the depths of the ocean and at bird's eye level. They are not hampered by either high or cold temperatures. To exist, they need only one condition - someone else's life. And it doesn’t have to be a person or an animal; one cell, bacteria, or even another virus is enough, where the infectious agent can multiply.
However, none of the above hypotheses is applicable to all viruses known to man. And yet, based on the composition of some viral organisms, scientists suggest that viruses are among the most ancient organisms to originate on earth. A bitter “joke of nature” - as soon as life arose, death appeared.
And yet, some scientists see viruses not as time bombs, but as the main engine of evolution. According to the so-called “virological theory of evolution,” if not for viruses, the animal world would have remained at the level of single-celled individuals. Their merit lies in the fact that when infecting one organism, say a plant, the virus borrows genes from it and transfers it to the next living organism upon contact. And the latter are already adapting them for their own purposes. Thus, thanks to viral infections, mammals acquired a temporary organ, the placenta, which takes nutrients from the mother’s body and transfers them to the embryo. In other words, it was thanks to viruses that humans, many mammals and fish acquired the ability to bear children.
According to scientists, what was created in nature and worked well will never disappear. For example, the hemoglobin gene, which once appeared in dinosaurs, was transmitted via viruses to plants, insects, animals and, finally, humans. And it serves completely different purposes: in humans and animals to transport oxygen, in plants it is a transport protein in the roots.
Among the viruses, the most dangerous for humans is the so-called retrovirus, which infects mainly vertebrates. This is the only virus that has the ability to transfer its information from RNA to DNA and vice versa. Believing scientists dubbed it “an instrument of God,” since it was the retrovirus that was the main active force in “viral evolution.”
Ironically, it is the retrovirus that is the cause of many chronic, incurable and often fatal human diseases. The infamous HIV also belongs to this genus of organisms. Also, the “merits” of retroviruses include many cases of cancer.
Despite the fact that a virus fatal to humans can appear anytime and anywhere, there are special areas on Earth with a “favorable” environment for its spread. And recently, scientists managed to create a map of the planet’s “hot spots” where a new “plague” should appear. Basically, these are zones with a humid tropical climate: the mouth of the Niger River in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Hindustan. The situation may worsen due to the fact that it is in these areas that primary indication, identification of viruses and the development of any methods of influencing them are not actually practiced.
By the way, there is also one dangerous point on the territory of Russia - the Far Eastern regions, which have always been a hotbed of occurrence of many diseases, especially those transmitted by insects. According to researchers, Russia cannot be called a virus-safe area at all. The absence of hot spots on the territory of our country is so far only the result of the fact that Russia has not been studied in this regard.
If a person is always surrounded by deadly viruses, then how can we explain the order of epidemics? According to scientists, the causes of pandemics can be completely different: a mutating virus for which the human immune system has not had time to develop a “remedy,” or the emergence of an infection in a society that has been isolated from it for a long time. By the way, European colonists often became the cause of mass diseases among the indigenous population of the conquered territories, since they turned out to be more resistant to many viruses than the Indians and Negroids.
Another consistent cause of the largest pandemics in human history is physical and climate change. Thus, the notorious “Black Death” - bubonic and pneumonic plague, which wiped out most of the population of medieval Europe (about 60 million people) was preceded by global climatic cataclysms. In Europe, as a result of the eruption of Mount Etna in 1333, the weather was warm and damp. Several years before the great disaster began, heavy rains and floods occurred in France and Germany, accompanied by crop failure, locust infestations and livestock pestilence. Such environmental conditions created a favorable atmosphere for the life of a dangerous virus, and raging famine brought hordes of rodents - the spreaders of the disease - closer to people's homes.
Of course, such processes cannot but cause concern among virologists. The 20th and 21st centuries have already shown themselves to be “climatically unstable.” Volcanic eruptions, major floods, earthquakes, climate change and, finally, the threat of global warming - all this creates ideal conditions for the emergence of a new pandemic. And viral activity proves this: over the past 65 years, the number of new and mutating viruses infecting humans has increased 4 times.
Epidemics have claimed more human lives than all other natural phenomena. More than war. Pandemics of plague, typhus, smallpox and cholera devastated entire territories and claimed millions of lives. Such “victorious” statistics could not help but give rise to the idea of using viruses as biological weapons. And, despite the 1972 international convention banning the development, production and stockpiling of biological weapons, the possibility of an artificially caused epidemic today raises concerns even among experts.
And they are not groundless. For example, the smallpox virus, which today is considered destroyed in the natural environment, is still stored in laboratories in Russia and the USA. At the same time, despite the availability of a vaccine, most of the world's population is not vaccinated, since the vaccine is characterized by serious consequences. In recent years, before the virus was officially declared eradicated, more people got sick from the vaccine than from the virus.
"Doctor Virus and Mr. Hyde" (doc. film)
Just before World War II, people knew very little about viruses, but this mysterious world of microorganisms, which cause terrible epidemics, attracted our attention, and we realized that someday it would be possible to make sure that they do not cause harm. At that time, what is known about viruses now would have been considered incredible. What happened anyway? Many viruses have unusual properties, and this story begins with the Epstein-Barr virus. The name of this virus is unknown to many, but nevertheless, without manifesting itself in any way, it has settled in 90% of us.
How to avoid getting infected with Ebola