The Cavendish: Viruses: Are They Living Organisms?

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Viruses: Are They Living Organisms?

Are viruses living organisms? They are not made of cells. According to the Cell Theory, all living things are made of cells. The cell is the basic unit of structure and function. However, if a virus infects a compatible cell they can reproduce themselves in great numbers using the reproductive machinery of that cell. Anyone who has had the flu or the common cold has experienced this process. Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites which is a fancy way of saying that they require a living cell to survive. Otherwise they remain dormant, in the air or on a surface waiting to meet the right cell. Can you name some diseases caused by viruses?

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Quotations to Encourage the Contemplative

“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
“The human brain now holds the key to our future. We have to recall the image of the planet from outer space: a single entity in which air, water, and continents
“Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism”
"If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." - Abraham Maslow
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them - well, I have others." - Groucho Mar
"The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease" - Sir William Osler
"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." - Confucius
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." - HL Mencken
I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. - Pete Seeger
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. - Bertrand Russell
I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex. - Bertrand Russell
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. - Betrand Russell
The word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else... almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. – George Orwell, What is Fascism?
We've discovered the secret of life. - Francis Crick
Any living cell carries with it the experience of a billion years of experimentation by its ancestors. - Max Delbruck
We don't regard any scientific theory as the absolute truth. - Kenneth Miller
The five warmest years over the last century occurred in the last eight years. - James Hansen
Education in my family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d'etre. - Stephen Dhu
A scientist is in a sense a learned small boy. There is something of the scientist in every small boy. Others must outgrow it. Scientists can stay that way all their lives. - George Wald
Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false. - E.O Wilson
If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. - E.O.Wilson
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. - E.O.Wilson
Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal. - E.O.Wilson
very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic. -E.O.Wilson
Ten years ago, you could have traveled thousands of miles through the United States and never seen a baseball cap turned back to front. Today, the reverse baseball cap is ubiquitous. I do not know what the pattern of geographical spread of the reverse baseball cap precisely was, but epidemiology is certainly among the professions primarily qualified to study it." -Richard Dawkins
It has become almost a clichŽ to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.- Richard Dawkins
“Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism” -Linus Pauling
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. -Hanry James
Human suffering can only be mitigated when all men assume responsibility for each other. - Fydor Dostoyevsky
"Writing makes you more human" - John Updike
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." Ray Bradbury