Read Online The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Richard Preston
Tags: Fiction
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types of HIV seem to have jumped out of sooty mangabey monkeys and chimpanzees, and began spreading in people. Very often, when a virus jumps species, it is particularly lethal in its new host.
There are many poxviruses in nature, and they infect species that gather in swarms and herds, circulating among them like pickpockets at a fair. There are two principal kinds of poxviruses: the poxes of vertebrates and the poxes of insects. Pox hunters have so far discovered mousepox, monkeypox, skunkpox, pigpox, goatpox, camelpox, cowpox, pseudo-cowpox, buffalopox, gerbilpox, several deerpoxes, chamoispox, a couple of sealpoxes, turkeypox, canarypox, pigeonpox, starlingpox, peacockpox, sparrowpox, juncopox, mynahpox, quailpox, parrotpox, and toadpox. There’s mongolian horsepox, a pox called Yaba monkey tumor, and a pox called orf. There’s dolphinpox, penguinpox, two kangaroopoxes, raccoonpox, and quokkapox. (The quokka is an Australian wallaby.) Snakes catch snakepox, spectacled caimans suffer from spectacled caimanpox, and crocodiles get crocpox. “Generally speaking, when crocodiles get crocpox, you see these bumps on them. I don’t think it’s particularly nasty for a croc,” a poxvirus expert named Richard Moyer said to me. “My guess is that fish get poxes, but nobody’s looked much for fish with pox,” Moyer said.
Insects are tortured by poxviruses. There are three groups of insect poxviruses: the beetlepoxes, the butterflypoxes (which include the mothpoxes), and the poxes of flies, including the mosquitopoxes. Any attempt to get to the bottom of the insect poxes would be like trying to enumerate the nine billion names of God.
Insects don’t have skin—they have exoskeletons—and so they can’t pustulate. Instead, poxviruses drive insects mad. A caterpillar that has caught a pox becomes nervous. It staggers around in circles on a leaf, agitated and losing its balance, and it can’t seem to find its way. (This may be a caterpillar’s version of “the anxious face of smallpox.”) The caterpillar’s development is interrupted, and the caterpillar keeps on growing bigger, until it is twice normal size. The virus is making its host larger—a nice way for a virus to amplify itself. Eventually the insect is transformed and destroyed, ending up as a swollen bag filled with a soup of insect guts and tiny crystalline nuggets that look like Wiffle balls. This soup is technically known as a virus melt. Each opening of each Wiffle ball in the melt ends up containing a particle of insect pox. The insect pox virions are inserted into the Wiffle balls and protrude from them like the knobs on a mine.
The caterpillar dies clinging to a leaf, and splits open, and out pours a spreading virus melt. The guts decay and are gone, leaving behind the Wiffle balls, which can persist for years in the environment. One day, a caterpillar comes along and eats the viral equivalent of a land mine, and melts down, and so it goes for hundreds of millions of years in the happy life of an insect pox.
No fossils of viruses have ever been found in rocks, so the origin of viruses is shrouded in mystery. Viruses are presumably very ancient, and may be similar to the earliest forms of life that appeared on the earth more than three and a half billion years ago. The insect poxes may have arisen in early Devonian times, long before the age of dinosaurs, when the seas teemed with sharks and armored fish, and the earth was covered with mosses and small plants, and there were still no trees, and the first insects were evolving. Some experts feel that the poxes of vertebrates could be the descendants of insect poxes. Smallpox, too, looks like the knobs on the Wiffle ball, though without the ball. Perhaps there was a trans-species jump of an insect pox into a newt some three hundred and fifty million years ago. Perhaps the knobs fell off the Wiffle ball when the pox got into the newt, and we are living with the consequences today.
At least two known
There are many poxviruses in nature, and they infect species that gather in swarms and herds, circulating among them like pickpockets at a fair. There are two principal kinds of poxviruses: the poxes of vertebrates and the poxes of insects. Pox hunters have so far discovered mousepox, monkeypox, skunkpox, pigpox, goatpox, camelpox, cowpox, pseudo-cowpox, buffalopox, gerbilpox, several deerpoxes, chamoispox, a couple of sealpoxes, turkeypox, canarypox, pigeonpox, starlingpox, peacockpox, sparrowpox, juncopox, mynahpox, quailpox, parrotpox, and toadpox. There’s mongolian horsepox, a pox called Yaba monkey tumor, and a pox called orf. There’s dolphinpox, penguinpox, two kangaroopoxes, raccoonpox, and quokkapox. (The quokka is an Australian wallaby.) Snakes catch snakepox, spectacled caimans suffer from spectacled caimanpox, and crocodiles get crocpox. “Generally speaking, when crocodiles get crocpox, you see these bumps on them. I don’t think it’s particularly nasty for a croc,” a poxvirus expert named Richard Moyer said to me. “My guess is that fish get poxes, but nobody’s looked much for fish with pox,” Moyer said.
Insects are tortured by poxviruses. There are three groups of insect poxviruses: the beetlepoxes, the butterflypoxes (which include the mothpoxes), and the poxes of flies, including the mosquitopoxes. Any attempt to get to the bottom of the insect poxes would be like trying to enumerate the nine billion names of God.
Insects don’t have skin—they have exoskeletons—and so they can’t pustulate. Instead, poxviruses drive insects mad. A caterpillar that has caught a pox becomes nervous. It staggers around in circles on a leaf, agitated and losing its balance, and it can’t seem to find its way. (This may be a caterpillar’s version of “the anxious face of smallpox.”) The caterpillar’s development is interrupted, and the caterpillar keeps on growing bigger, until it is twice normal size. The virus is making its host larger—a nice way for a virus to amplify itself. Eventually the insect is transformed and destroyed, ending up as a swollen bag filled with a soup of insect guts and tiny crystalline nuggets that look like Wiffle balls. This soup is technically known as a virus melt. Each opening of each Wiffle ball in the melt ends up containing a particle of insect pox. The insect pox virions are inserted into the Wiffle balls and protrude from them like the knobs on a mine.
The caterpillar dies clinging to a leaf, and splits open, and out pours a spreading virus melt. The guts decay and are gone, leaving behind the Wiffle balls, which can persist for years in the environment. One day, a caterpillar comes along and eats the viral equivalent of a land mine, and melts down, and so it goes for hundreds of millions of years in the happy life of an insect pox.
No fossils of viruses have ever been found in rocks, so the origin of viruses is shrouded in mystery. Viruses are presumably very ancient, and may be similar to the earliest forms of life that appeared on the earth more than three and a half billion years ago. The insect poxes may have arisen in early Devonian times, long before the age of dinosaurs, when the seas teemed with sharks and armored fish, and the earth was covered with mosses and small plants, and there were still no trees, and the first insects were evolving. Some experts feel that the poxes of vertebrates could be the descendants of insect poxes. Smallpox, too, looks like the knobs on the Wiffle ball, though without the ball. Perhaps there was a trans-species jump of an insect pox into a newt some three hundred and fifty million years ago. Perhaps the knobs fell off the Wiffle ball when the pox got into the newt, and we are living with the consequences today.
At least two known
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