
The Insanity Virus - leonardodw
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jun/03-the-insanity-virus
======
Groxx
> _Beyond that, the insanity virus (if such it proves) may challenge our basic
> views of human evolution, blurring the line between “us” and “them,” between
> pathogen and host._

Oh, I think we're already there. Given that there are ~10x more microorganisms
in your gut than cells in your body[1], and the more you learn about the
lymphatic / immune system the more it seems like a symbiote rather than a part
of our body, _and_ that mitochondria share many characteristics of symbiotic
bacteria[2]. It's another wrinkle, and a very interesting one at that, but
that's far from a revolutionary concept.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora> [2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion#Origin>

~~~
die_sekte
Jeff McMahan has some very interesting arguments about what we are. Simply
put, he argues that we are not our cells. Our cells, our organisms are simply
part of ourselves. Based on that I think that we are entities made out of e.g.
our cells, immune systems and the bacteria which our organisms carry. Sure, we
can make a distinction between 'us' and 'them'; it's just that 'us' actually
includes 'them', and that it's just a distinction made by ourselves because we
like simple models and hate the feeling of being not autonomous. Humans like
to compartmentalize: we see that all the time especially when dealing which
psychiatric diseases.

~~~
ugh
I don’t think I’m my cells or the bacteria living in my gut. Well, that’s not
entirely true, I clearly perceive the cells in my hand and the bacteria in my
gut as part of myself in some way but not the same way as other things.

Maybe this question is helpful: What do I care about? Clearly not my cells or
microorganisms. I would be more than happy to dispose of my hip joint and
replace it with titanium should that ever be necessary. I essentially think
the same about every other part of my body.

I also don’t care about my DNA at all. If you cloned me after my death I
wouldn’t suddenly spring to life, I wouldn’t be reborn as a baby, my clone
would be a different person.

What do I care about, then? That, which says this sentence in my brain right
now as I type it, whatever it is. It’s probably rooted in structures in my
brain somewhere. Which doesn’t mean that I care about the cells in my brain,
not at all. If there is a way to preserve that structure and run it I would be
just fine. That’s what I care about.

That, to me, is the most important, probably the only really important part of
me. The body matters but only in the sense of being a sort of tool.

~~~
possibilistic
You should care about your DNA! It isn't just a blueprint, but a computational
device that stores an insane amount of state information. In fact, the
internal state of your cells as an aggregate (genome/proteome,
concentration/expression levels, modifications, etc) hold far more state info
than mere synapses.

I understand that we all view our brains as a record of our cognisant
experiences. However, there is far more at play at the molecular level than
non-biologists usually consider. Brains are not magical "higher level"
abstract devices. They work in concert with the existing computational
machinery of the cell and the genome.

If you don't buy that argument, at least be mindful that if you don't take
adequate care, you will increase your probability of getting a cancer that
your immune system cannot fight. Your cells are critical. Your gut flora is
critical. You are an ecosystem, not an individual. Your mind is only the
deterministic imprinting that the physical world makes on you as you make your
way through life.

(I'm a computational biochemist and soon to be systems biology student.)

~~~
ugh
Ok, then let me rephrase that, I care about whatever it is that makes me think
this sentence. I don’t necessarily care about its specific implementation,
whatever it is.

This doesn’t mean that I think I shouldn’t take care of my body – I know that
it is instrumental to me – I just wouldn’t care much if it were destroyed
should I be able to continue be whatever makes me write this sentence.

------
defen
This article reminds of something Gregory Cochran has been saying for years -
"Your genes didn't evolve to kill you". He has a hypothesis that many of the
illnesses and chronic conditions that do not have a clear genetic or
environmental toxin basis are actually caused by germs - bacteria or viruses.
This would include things like heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, some
mental illnesses, etc. The problem is that many of these things do not satisfy
Koch's postulates for infectious disease, making it very difficult to test. Or
the disease progression takes 40+ years. Unfortunately I'm on my phone at the
moment so I can't look anything up, else I would post some links.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Death is an evolved trait. It's an advantage for most organisms because it
ensures a steady turnover of populations which enables micro and macro
evolution at a reasonable pace in response to environmental, climate, et al
changes.

~~~
powrtoch
Sounds like the bad kind of group selectionism hypothesis to me. Death bestows
no fitness benefit to the individual, and is therefore not evolutionarily
selected for. Organisms don't die because evolution says they should, they die
because evolution doesn't care.

~~~
skybrian
It's more active than that. A trait that enhances reproduction and reduces
longevity will be selected for, so whenever there are engineering tradeoffs
between reproduction and longevity, evolution will select in favor of
reproduction.

~~~
loewenskind
Odd then that the most advanced species have the longest gestation periods and
the simplest species have the shortest.

~~~
eru
That's because there's no advanced and simple in evolution.

~~~
loewenskind
My point was that the parents comment was completely unfounded. Did humans
always have super fast gestation periods and then right before we gained
intelligence it suddenly took the better part of a year and produced a child
that isn't self sufficient for at least a decade?

When the evolution subject comes up it always seems to inspire a bunch of
would-be scifi writers to come out and explain "how it all works" based on, as
near as I can tell, pure fantasy.

~~~
eru
Depends on how you interpret `reproduction' in the comment you're talking
about.

Reproduction trumps everything in evolution. It's everything, actually. But
for that to be true you can't define it as `number of offspring born', but in
a more long-term sense. And e.g. Elephants seem to have more long-term off-
spring by investing more in fewer births.

------
SoftwareMaven
I have a very close family member who has suffered from schizophrenia. It is
troubling to think that the months of ear infections (or infections that
caused said infections) when she was a newborn could have been the trigger.

On the flip-side, it is very heartening to think they may be moving closer to
understanding the disease. Looking at my family history, I believe there is a
strong predilection in my family for it, so having some hope that my children
and/or grandchildren could possibly be spared would be fantastic.

------
AnthonBerg
I have the feeling that these things we never can pin down the cause for -
like schizophrenia, MS, and psoriasis - I don't think they are caused by any
one thing. Perhaps we have been fooled by the almost one-to-one mapping of
reason-to-illness that we have seen so far. Schizophrenia, MS, and also
psoriasis, are complex systems that manifest from accumlated weaknesses in
incredibly complex systems.

~~~
devinj
Schizophrenia is, to my understanding, sort of a catch-all phrase for several
different problems with similar symptoms but different effective treatments.
Even in the study, they found only 49% of people with schizophrenia were
infected.

~~~
mkramlich
That's why that 49% figure is so exciting. Because it's so high it could mean
that, say, this retro-virus truly is involved in 100% of cases of true
schizophrenia, but that those other 51% of the people either (a) don't really
have precisely "schizophrenia" but a slightly different disease that just has
very similar symptoms, and/or (b) experimental error of some kind. And not
only could there be different diseases that have very similar symptoms but
it's possible that a single disease could be reached via a different set of
initial/contributing causes, or at least a slightly different causal pathway.
For example, take some hypothetical disease that is found to be "caused by" a
lack of vitamin D. Well, it may be possible that a particular person gets
plenty of vitamin D intake, but that they have a gene variant that makes their
body not utilize vitamin D normally. Or perhaps their genes are fine, but they
have some other gross bodily malfunction (organ failure?) that is causing the
vitamin D utilization process to be disrupted or minimized. Regardless of the
specific chain of causation, they could all result in the same unhealthy
symptoms expressed.

~~~
philwelch
_Because it's so high it could mean that, say, this retro-virus truly is
involved in 100% of cases of true schizophrenia, but that those other 51% of
the people either (a) don't really have precisely "schizophrenia" but a
slightly different disease that just has very similar symptoms, and/or (b)
experimental error of some kind._

It's really weird to characterize diseases by their effects rather than their
cause, because then you don't really have a disease per se, but rather a
pattern of symptoms that may or may not always have the same cause.

One major example is SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), which appears to be
little more than a medical term for "the baby died of asphyxiation and we
can't figure out how".

~~~
rbanffy
"we can't figure out"

That's also synonymous with "it's a viral infection".

------
po
_We lug around 100,000 retro virus sequences inside us; all told, genetic
parasites related to viruses account for more than 40 percent of all human
DNA. Our body works hard to silence its viral stowaways by tying up those
stretches of DNA in tight stacks of proteins, but sometimes they slip out. Now
and then endogenous retroviruses switch on and start manufacturing proteins.
They assemble themselves like Lego blocks into bulbous retroviral particles,
which ooze from the cells producing them._

Sounds like technical debt. Anyone up for a refactoring code sprint?

~~~
elai
From my childhood experience of computing of deleting things I thought were
useless and then finding out soon after I really borked my system, i'd be a
bit more careful.

~~~
eru
That's why we use version control.

------
die_sekte
Wow.

It's remarkable how failure-tolerant the human body is.

I guess that this is truly a sign of 'the future'. Forget hoverboards, we're
one step closer to being able to reshape ourselves, one step closer to fixing
diseases at the source.

------
adammichaelc
I wonder what would happen to creativity and innovation if you got rid of
schizophrenia and bipolar by killing this virus as it attacks an infant. Two
of the people mentioned, John Nash and Jack Kerouac, were brilliant I think in
part because of their illness. I don't know the answer to the question, but
it's an interesting thing to consider.

~~~
hugh3
I don't know much about Kerouac, but from reading his biography I don't get
the impression that Nash was brilliant because of his illness. He was
brilliant in spite of his illness, or more accurately I think he was brilliant
before his illness really started hitting him and he was never really the same
again afterwards.

Schizophrenia has destroyed a lot of promising young minds, and I'm not
convinced that it has created any.

~~~
adammichaelc
That doesn't sound right. From what I've read, people with mental illness and
those who are highly creative may get the trait (creativity on the one hand
and mental illness on the other) from the same source.[1]

From a study on the subject:

 _Daniel Nettle, a psychologist at Newcastle University, and Helen Clegg, at
the Open University in Milton Keynes, carried out the survey.

On analysing 425 responses, the psychologists found that artists and
schizophrenics scored equally high on unusual cognition, a trait which gives
rise to a greater tendency to feel in between reality and a dream state, or to
feel overwhelmed by one’s own thoughts._

[1]
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/30/psychology.hig...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/30/psychology.highereducation)

~~~
hugh3
_the psychologists found that artists and schizophrenics scored equally high
on unusual cognition, a trait which gives rise to a greater tendency to feel
in between reality and a dream state, or to feel overwhelmed by one’s own
thoughts._

I don't think it follows. Just because both schizophrenia and artistic
temperament are characterised by "unusual cognition" doesn't mean that they're
related. Being drunk is like being a lemur in that they both prohibit you from
driving a car, but it doesn't follow that drunkenness and lemurness are
related.

~~~
yters
Right, you can respond that way to pretty much any correlation. But, if
there's a plausible explanation for an actual connection, such a dismissal is
too trite.

------
car
The last paragraph says it all:

 _Even after all that, many medical experts still question how much human
disease can be traced to viral invasions that took place millions of years
ago. If the upcoming human trials work as well as the animal experiments, the
questions may be silenced—and so may the voices of schizophrenia._

------
lasonrisa
A honest question, is Discover magazine usually this good?

------
mkramlich
Due to the breakthroughs discussed in the OA, and some other things, I'd bet
they'll have a "cure" of some sort for schizophrenia within the next 10 years,
tops. Feels like they're hot on the trail. Also cancer and diabetes.

~~~
araneae
I would say much the opposite.

Given the fact that schizophrenics seem to have different brain morphology, it
seems that whatever causes it has _organizational_ , not _activational_
effects.

That is to say, the brain is permanently damaged during a critical period in a
child's life, which leads to these effects later on. If it is a virus, perhaps
it could be prevented, but almost certainly not cured.

~~~
jonhendry
Unless neurogenesis can be triggered in such a way that new neurons develop
and migrate along the normal routes, once the disruption is removed.

Therapy to encourage new synapse development could also help, once any
morphology-disrupting factor is removed.

~~~
araneae
Migration of neurons occurs primarily in utero and very early childhood, and
as you might notice, during this time very few memories are formed.

That's because memories are built on those very synaptic connection you would
need to rewire. Any cure that deals with reorganizing the brain could very
well wipe out who they are. If it's even possible. And for that kind of
technology we're talking at minimum centuries, not decades.

