Andromeda Strain and Virus Evolution - Essay Example

Due to the incredible rate of transportation and interconnectedness of the contemporary world, it will be very challenging to prevent it from rapidly spreading around the world. We must be very mindful of this as such a situation is a potentially existential threat. It is not enough to simply say that the Andromeda Strain is a work of fiction with no bearing on our world.

The lesson it teaches us is to be vigilant. We have to be on guard at all times to avoid the disaster that an evolving deadly virus represents. There are two main forms of virus evolution that we need to be mindful of. One is called inter-host evolution. This can be measured as we can identify the changes the virus is undergoing as it travels from one host to another. We need to focus on this form of evolution as it provides us with the best source of information about potential threats facing us (Domingo).

The second form is more sinister. Intra-host evolution occurs within the host and can be invisible to the eye or other methods of investigation. We need to be especially watchful of this form of virus evolution and develop rapid response measures to deal with it when it becomes apparent. A number of contemporary scientists weighed in on this issue, during the recent outbreak of swine flu. They too identify virus evolution as a great threat. "Viruses have evolved to exploit human contact as a way of spreading," points out Peter Daszak of the Wildlife Trust, whose team 14 months ago predicted just this sort of evolution in an animal flu, coming from Latin America to the United States after evolving to infect people.

David Schaffer, a professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering at the University of California at Berkeley, explains the mechanics of how a flu virus morphs: "For flu, there are multiple ways that diversity can arise (the virus has multiple strands of RNA in its genome, and it can mix and swap strands with different flu variants to give rise to fully novel variants … in addition, each strand can individually mutate)," Schaffer explained this week. "Furthermore, in this case, the enhanced property from the virus point of view is the ability to infect humans.