Perhaps Why Pregnancy Is So Dangerous

[Leebot]

Maybe the woman should be allowed to call for abortion after the birth, like Ms Cartman did  :D Or wanted to, before she realized that Cartman was already in his 40th Trimester...

Personally, in that case, I would fully support aborting Cartman. It's for the good of the world.

[Burning Zeppelin]

Maybe the woman should be allowed to call for abortion after the birth, like Ms Cartman did   Or wanted to, before she realized that Cartman was already in his 40th Trimester...

Personally, in that case, I would fully support aborting Cartman. It's for the good of the world.

You bastard!

[ChibiBob]

-siiigh.-

Here's where I smack whoever started this debate, smack twice whoever continued it, and give poor Ms. Cartman a cookie, because gosh darnit, hasn't that woman suffered enough?

Here's also where I give my brief opinion on abortion and whack myself a couple times upside the head, because I just can't resist. Life should be defined as individual organisms who are able to sustain their own processes as separate beings. That, for example, is why the virus cannot be considered living, since it requires living tissue to reproduce and continue existing, yet parasites such as ticks and tapeworms can be considered living, since they are physically able to exist outside animal influence (although it won't be the greatest existence ever or anything). I'm not trying to associate fetuses with viruses or anything, but it's the only viable explanation I can give — a fetus requires its host mother to develop the tissues and absorb the nutrition necessary for its future life outside the womb. Therefore, a fetus is not an individual life form, but an actual part of its mother's body until the umbilical cord is cut.

That being said, it should therefore be entirely up to the mother whether a part of her body should be removed or not. It's not the most pleasant explanation in the world, a fetus akin to a kidney or an appendix that can be removed without noticable harm to the mother's body, but in all cases that is exactly what a fetus is for the nine months it's housed in its mother's uterus. Whether a fetus should be aborted or not, however, should depend only on the mother's view.  If she can emotionally deal with the loss of an unborn child, something that is not yet its own lifeform but will nevertheless become one in the future, that should be enough to allow for her to abort the fetus. If she is not emotionally able to come to terms with the loss, or if her religious views conflict with the topic of abortion in general, that's her perogative.

But it's more a debate over whether religious views should be impressed upon those without said views in order to preserve what some would term the "sanctity of life." As long as we have religion, it's a debate that will never reach a conclusion satisfying enough to both sides of the table.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to grab a baggie of ice for the two large palmprints upside my head.

[Mystik3eb]

Cartman's mom doesn't deserve shit. She willingly was in German porn movies, eating shit and drinking piss, dropped straight into her mouth. She deserves nothing except 'smack'.

As for your opinion on the matter, I fully agree. Women should be allowed to choose, whether other people think they're committing murder or not. Frankly, I don't see the fetuses complaining one way or the other, not until they're old enough to understand what abortion is and thank their mom for not aborting them. Some people don't. Like that Sum41 song. Bahaha!

[Burning Zeppelin]

CRACK WHORE MAGAZINE presents
CARTMANS MUM!

Anyway, some people think viruses are alive   (forever more this shall be my *hmph* emocticon)

[GrayLensman]

Anyway, some people think viruses are alive   (forever more this shall be my *hmph* emocticon)

Behold, the mimivirus!

[Burning Zeppelin]

   
Giant virus qualifies as 'living organism'

This article is available in full to Premium plus subscribers

Damn me and my infernal non Premiumness!

[GreenGannon]

That's why Wikipedia exists.

The mimivirus is a giant double-stranded DNA virus with mature particles of 400 nm in diameter (icosahedral capsid). It has approximately 1,200,000 bases and 900 genes. It was first discovered in 1992 in an industrial cooling tower in Bradford in England and identified in 2003 by researchers at the Université de la Méditerranée in Marseille in France. The virus, discovered during research into Legionellosis (the cause of Legionnaire's Disease), was found inside the water-borne amoeba Acanthamoeba polyphaga. The virus showed up in a gram stain, and was mistakenly thought to be a gram-positive bacteria, and named "Bradfordcoccus". Human blood samples have also revealed antibodies and the virus is thought to have at one time caused a type of pneumonia. Although it was once a suspect in the pneumonia outbreak in Bradford, today scientists believe that the virus can only infect amoebas.

Later research from the same university, as published in Science, following the sequencing of the virus in 2004 give these measures: 800 nm long, 1,181,404 bp, 1262 genes. Only ten percent is junk DNA. In March 2006, New Scientist put the figure at 911 genes, and 1.2 million bases.

Jean-Michel Claverie, from the Université de la Méditerranée says about Mimi: "It makes this DNA virus look like a new kind of parasitic life-form."

Alive?

Recently scientists have declared that, as the virus particle is capable of generating its own proteins, it is in fact considered a living organism, an idea which adds to the confusion of virus classification. Mimivirus, with its 911 protein-coding genes, codes for 50 proteins never before seen in viruses, including chaperones to assist protein folding and proof reading enzymes. It represents a new family of "nucleocytoplasmic" large DNA viruses that emerged with the first life on Earth some four billion years ago. It has even been suggested that Mimivirus is a fourth domain of life, next to the eukaryotes, procaryotes and Archaea. Because its lineage is very old and could have emerged prior to cellular organisms, Mimivirus has added to the debate over the origins of life.

[GrayLensman]

   
Giant virus qualifies as 'living organism'

This article is available in full to Premium plus subscribers

Damn me and my infernal non Premiumness!

The article displays fine for me, and I haven't signed up for any premium service.

Article Text:

Giant virus qualifies as 'living organism'

Mark Peplow

Huge genome allows mimivirus to make its own proteins.

The virus's genetic sequence also holds clues that may explain the evolution of the very first cells possessing a nucleus of DNA.

Since the 1960s, scientists have argued about whether viruses are living organisms or just a bundle of very large molecules. Viruses are usually much smaller and simpler than bacteria, consisting simply of genetic material surrounded by a protein coat. A virus has to hijack another organism's biological machinery to replicate, which it does by inserting its DNA into a host. Bacteria, on the other hand, carry all that they need to reproduce independently, and thus qualify as alive.

Although it shows all the trademark features of a virus, the mimivirus is much more complex, says Jean-Michel Claverie, a biologist from the Institute of Structural Biology and Microbiology in Marseilles, France, who worked on the sequencing effort. If viruses were cars, Mimi would still be a car, he says,but it would be a luxury model with more gadgets. "It makes this DNA virus look like a new kind of parasitic life-form," he says.

Mimi carries about 50 genes that do things never seen before in a virus. It can make about 150 of its own proteins, along with chemical chaperones to help the proteins to fold in the right way. It can even repair its own DNA if it gets damaged, unlike normal viruses.

And although viruses can use either DNA or RNA to carry their genetic information, Mimi has both. "We are seeing an organism here. There is DNA, RNA and plenty of proteins," says Didier Raoult, a lead member of the team from the Mediterranean University in Marseilles, France, who reports the work in this week's Science1.

Monster virus

Mimi was discovered in 1992, nestling inside an amoeba found inside a cooling tower in Bradford, UK, that was being investigated as the source of an influenza outbreak. Later research2 showed that it was a real monster, measuring about 800 nanometres across, more than four times as big as a smallpox virus. The new study shows that its genome contains 1.2 million bases, which is more than many bacteria contain and makes it several times bigger than the largest DNA viruses. The bases make up 1,260 genes, which makes it as complex as some bacteria, the scientists say.

What's more, viral DNA often contains lots of 'junk' sequences, genetic material that does not seem to serve any useful function. Mimi, on the other hand, is lean and mean: more than 90% of its DNA does something specific.

As Mimi carries some genes involved with replication, this could have helped it to spread faster than other viruses, explains Anne Bridgen, a virologist from the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. "I've never heard of viruses encoding something like this," she says.

Officially, the virus got its name because it mimics bacteria, says Raoult. "But my father, also a scientist, taught me a story about Mimi the Amoeba when I was very young, so it's also a tribute to him," he says.

Life lines

Although biologists sometimes divide life into three categories, the team says that Mimi is sufficiently different that it deserves a fourth branch of life all to itself.

Bacteria are the simplest branch, because they lack a nucleus to gather their genetic material together. Archaea are very similar, but are thought to have evolved separately because of their unusual cell membranes. Every other living thing is a eukaryote, that is, an organism that groups its genetic material into a nucleus inside its cells. But Mimi carries seven genes that are common to all cellular life, putting it on a par with the other life-forms, says Raoult.

Bridgen is less sure. "To say that this virus represents a fourth category would be overstating the evidence, but it may hint that the categorization into three domains is oversimplistic," she says.

Some scientists have speculated that eukaryotes originally evolved from collaboration between a virus and a bacterium. Bacteria could have supplied the ribosomes, the protein factories of the cell, and viruses might have injected their genetic material into a proto-nucleus. One weakness of the theory is that viruses generally lack some of the key genes seen in eukaryotes. But Mimi's complex genome includes these, lending support to the idea, says Raoult.

The team are now trying to find more giant viruses like Mimi, and are also busy working out exactly how it uses all its genes.

[Burning Zeppelin]

Wow, thats quite incredible!

[GreenGannon]

For the record, someone on that computer must have a premium subscription, because I saw the screen Zeppelin saw. Thanks for posting the article, though.

[Burning Zeppelin]

Let me guess, you share a room with someone? Oh man, I wish I'd be like you guys. Living out your own life, no parents to nag you, good ol' home made food (albeit horribly disgusting) and best of all, bringing in your girlfriend without parents smashing your head in with a frying pan!  

[Leebot]

I saw the entire article, too, and I don't have a premium subscription or share a room with anyone. Maybe it's the University ISP that's doing it.

[Burning Zeppelin]

Yeah probably. Must be because...well...its a Uni.