viruses – Harmonia Philosophica

Bacteria. Viruses. Good. Bad…

Normally, you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with Clostridium novyi.

The rod-shaped bacterium is commonly found in soil, manure or under rotting leaves. When it invades a human body, it releases flesh-eating toxins. The last place you would hope to find it is in a hospital.

But researchers used a modified version of this bacterium to destroy an advanced cancer that had spread to a patient’s shoulder. When injected directly into the shoulder tumor, the altered bacterium killed the cancer cells, sparing nearby healthy ones.

Another bad bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes, is a frequent culprit in serious foodborne illnesses. But the microbe is being tested in patients with several types of cancer. Engineered with special tumor-recognition molecules, Listeria prods the immune system into action, marshaling an attack against tumors that the body might otherwise be unable to combat. (1)

Good. Bad.
Health. Disease.
Death. Life.

Stop defining things.
Stop thinking for a moment.
And everything will come back into place…

HIV spreading. Isolation. Sympathy.

Almost like detectives retracing the steps of a killer in a whodunnit, researchers have pieced together how the virus that later became known as HIV grew from infecting a few hunter-gatherers in Cameroon to affecting 76 million people across the globe.

Using historic blood samples to create a viral timeline, the team confirms that Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was the springboard for an explosion of infection that began around 1920 – and for the first time, comprehensively map out what happened next.

Once HIV had got a toehold in Kinshasa, migrant workers gradually carried the virus south to mining regions fed by new railways. Then, after the DRC became independent from Belgium in 1960, the virus – with the additional help of river transport and sex workers – spiralled out of control and spread to the rest of southern Africa, decades before the disease was first reported in 1981, and the virus was officially discovered in 1983. (1)

We connect with other people.
And that is why we die.
This is the only way to live…

Wear is a synonym to Being.
Being is a synonym to Life.
Life is a synonym to Death.

We all live.
We all die.

Through this decay we all affect everyone and everything.
Only through mortal parts can the immortal One exist…

See beyond the chaos of a virus spreading.
See life itself being manifested.
See eternity establishing itself via the ephemeral.

Ebola, HIV, humans, bacteria.
Everything in everything.
All in all.
And yet nothing…

Gut, viruses, life itself…

Odds are, there’s a virus living inside your gut that has gone undetected by scientists for decades. A new study has found that more than half the world’s population is host to a newly described virus, named crAssphage, which infects one of the most common gut bacterial species, Bacteroides. This bacterium thought to be connected with obesity, diabetes and other gut-related diseases. (1)

We are all sick.
We all have viruses and bacteria inside us.
We all have that disease called “life”.
And it has 100% mortality rate.
Can you live with that?