Not So Black, Not So White Either

Recently, I was sort of on my nth rewatch of House M.D., and one of the lines from an episode really caught my attention. Dr. Chase mentions something along the lines of the immune system being ancient. That really struck a chord and toggled the curiosity switch in me.

So I took it to ChatGPT and started asking about the immune system and its origin — was it due to evolution, or did single-celled organisms intrinsically have an immune system of their own?

They didn’t — because the threats that the first forms of life on our planet faced were not biological, they were environmental.

It’s when life started to diversify, mutate, and become complex that life started to become a threat to life itself. The diversity caused competition for space, resources, etc. So this attack between different organisms warranted and gave rise to the first defense systems, which later evolved due to a variety of factors — both environmental and biological.

This made me think — the rate of reproduction of viruses would have been many times higher than the rate of reproduction of other organisms. So why didn’t viruses wipe out life from Earth?

Viruses need hosts to survive. If a virus kills its host, it kills itself. The deadlier the virus, the deadlier it was to itself. Successful viruses took things a bit slowly: infect, replicate, spread. As viruses evolved, the hosts evolved too. As ChatGPT puts it — it was an arms race, not a massacre.

And that’s when ChatGPT dropped the biggest bomb.

Viruses were instrumental in our procreation and cognition. 8% of our DNA comes from ancient viruses that infected our ancestors’ sperm or egg. They injected genetic material into our DNA. The placenta in mammals also traces back to viral genomes. So our birth is a viral gift.

Viruses could also be responsible for the way our brain has developed — particularly neuroplasticity and higher cognition. Our mind could be part virus.

In other words, viruses had its hands on the spaceship of evolution's steering.

Now, by this time I was mind-fucked.

We tend to see viruses with fear. We try our best to avoid exposure to them. COVID sort of changed our lives permanently. And yet, life exists the way it does partly due to viruses.

We often try to make sense of the world in terms of black and white, right and wrong.
But is it really that simple?
I don’t think so.

At least, I’ve learned that viruses aren’t the villains I once thought they were.