Ancient Arctic Viruses May Soon Threaten Mankind

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The things we do, and the things Mother Nature does, are more often than not at odds with each other. The changing climate, accelerated by man made global warming and the continued use of fossil fuels not only threatens indigenous Arctic species as the permafrost melts at alarming rates, but mankind itself may well find itself facing an ancient and deadly enemy.

Photo: Reuters Staff/Reuters
Photo: Reuters Staff/Reuters

From TakePart.com:

by Emily J. Gertz

It’s a scenario straight out of The X-Files: A prehistoric pathogen, isolated for millennia in Arctic ice, comes to light in the modern world.

The catch is that it’s not science fiction—and thanks to the great Arctic thaw, the discovery suggests an emerging public health worry unless nations sharply cut fossil fuel use in the next few decades.

French scientists announced this week that working in the lab, they have found a “giant virus” in a 30,000-year-old sample of permafrost from Siberia.

It is the second giant virus isolated from the same permafrost sample in two years. The team found each one by infecting Acanthamoeba, a common contemporary protozoan, with viral material from the sample.

“That fact that two different viruses retain their infectivity in prehistorical permafrost layers should be of concern in a context of global warming,” the scientists wrote in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“If we are not careful, and we industrialize these areas without putting safeguards in place, we run the risk of one day waking up viruses such as smallpox that we thought were eradicated,” researcher Jean-Michel Claverie told the news service AFP. “A few viral particles that are still infectious may be enough, in the presence of a vulnerable host, to revive potentially pathogenic viruses.”

The mining and fossil fuel industries are eager to expand into the Arctic as the region’s thawing ice cover opens access to mineral and fossil fuel deposits in remote areas, some of them in important habitat for whales, walruses, seals, fish, and other Arctic species.

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Stacey Gray
8 years ago

Jurassic Park returned the dinosaurs with disastrous results. Just think of the havoc an invisible virus will wrack upon us.

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