Are viruses alive?

[Guest guest]

Nature does not classify. Taxonomy has no objective existence. We

use classifications as a way for our puny human minds to deal with

unwieldy amounts of information. With every classification comes a

loss of information and distortions in our thinking. The problem

begins with just the act of applying a name or a word as a metaphor

or a mapping. It is our human nature to use our labeled concepts as

reality. Alfred North Whitehead referred to this as misplaced concreteness.

Those familiar with our seminars know how I always stress that theory

must always take a back seat to the clinical, that is, never, ever

let a concept pull rank over the phenomenological. This is not

theoretical BS. This means that in cancer treatment you go with what

works and is repeatable. If something doesn't work you switch

up. All too many people go down defending their pet theories of

cancer being caused by stealth bacteria, or a virus, or a mycoplasma,

or a fungus, or an inflammation, or a trauma, or a karmic penance, or

a parasite, or oxygen starvation, or a heritable gene mutation, or a

lymphatic obstruction, or stress, or mutagenic chemicals, or UV from

the sun, or ionizing radiation, or subterranean stressors, & c.

It is our human nature to want explanations and to create

narratives. Even though our explanations are largely crude fantasies

we prefer this over the unsettling feeling that we are buffeted about

by forces over which we have no control. We like paternal authority

figures to tell us that we have a drought because we didn't do the

rain dance long enough and we didn't slay enough sacrificial

goats. At least we can do something -- dance more fervently and give

the rest of our goats to the priest. If that fails we know it was

witches or sodomists or heretics. The Holy Inquisitors will get to

the bottom of this. We are blind to this mentality in ourselves and

we let our nature, our fear, and our customs have us toadying to the

authorities.

Cancer etiology theories are just one of the innumerable biases we

have in our decision making. For many there is the ingrained

capitalistic bias that you get what you pay for, and then there is

the bias of following the fads. How many have died because they so

believed in maple syrup and baking soda, or of using lots of

aspartame with vitamin C? It is amazing how easily sincere-sounding

enthusiasts can rally followers.

Sometimes it is a whole culture that joins in with the

lemmings. What I am thinking of is the cultural worship of

synthesized small molecules for cancer therapy, that is, those with a

molecular weight under ~ 1,000 daltons. There is almost an infinite

number of such molecules. They are sequentially paraded out as

incrementally better treatments for a disease that is polyclonal and

aneuploidal. This means the fix is in: it is unlikely that any

cash-cow disease will ever be cured. Pharmaceutical manufacturers

openly say now that they want cancer to become a chronic

disease. The word " cure " is only used as a bait-and-switch to suck

donations from the naive.

Are viruses alive? It now sounds quaint to argue whether light is a

wave or a particle. It doesn't matter. You use the right

mathematics for the right job. It is the same with viruses. The

definition of viral life is again almost a quaint notion. Our

concern is its pathogenicity, not whether it has a proper soul. Are

viruses dismissed as " non-living " because they are obligate

parasites? The earth has no bigger parasite than the human

being. We might euphemistically think of ourselves as commensal or

symbiotic, but we are parasites sucking every bit of life out of the

planet. We can't help ourselves: its our nature. We call ourselves

homo sapiens when we should be honest and rename ourselves homo

plunderii, or homo gluttonii, or homo insaneii.