Viruses are a weird thing. We are afraid of them, but we try to use them as cure for cancer [1]. They seem to challenge the “central dogma” of modern biology, i.e. the movement of information from the DNA to RNA: transfering information from RNA to DNA was found to be routine in retroviruses (such as HIV, which causes AIDS) using the enzyme reverse transcriptase [2]. They seem “bad”, but again who are we to challenge the wisdom of nature which created them? They challenge everything we know about life and make biologists admit that their definition of what “life” is needs re-tuning, if we are to say that viruses are not living beings [3]. No matter how much modern medicine has evolved, we have not yet come to the position to be able to fight simple viruses – like the flu virus. We are too wise, but yet again too fool to understand those little pieces of gennetic information travelling everywhere around us.
Perhaps understanding viruses passes through understanding the unity of nature as a whole: Everything plays a role in life (even Gollum) and viruses must have a role too vital for so many of them to exist…
