XRJDM@SCFVM.BITNET (Joe McMahon) (08/23/90)
I see two problems with the comparison of the polio vaccine to hunter/killer viruses. 1) Human beings, despite genetic variations, still run pretty much the same "operating system". Even in cases where the polio vaccine becomes virulent, the body has built-in anti-viral defenses. This is not the case for computers. Computer "biology" (in terms of operating systems) is evolving at a rate many orders of magnitude faster than is human biology. Sooner or later, a computer virus will hit a situation with which it will be unable to cope. 2) It is not currently possible for anyone with the motivation to do so to reassemble an existing biological virus into a different virus without a lot of expensive equipment and a far greater amount of technical expertise than is available to most people. The virus "writer" often only needs a byte-level editor and very little expertise to turn out a variation on an existing virus. This could as easily be a bad as a good variation. --- Joe M.