Are there good viruses? - Big Questions - (Ep. 204) | Mental Floss
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Hi, I'm Craig. I contracted the beauty virus, and this is Mental Floss on YouTube
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Today, I'm going to answer Akali Baby 808's big question. Are there good viruses? Let's get started
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It turns out that virus doesn't necessarily mean disease. In fact, there are actually trillions of viruses in our bodies, and they're not all bad
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A virus just is a microorganism that can only reproduce if it's in a living organism
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And often they're the cause of disease and disease spread, but some viruses might be good for us
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For centuries, people have found ways for viruses to be advantageous. For instance, in the 1700s it was discovered that milkmaids who had a mild version of cowpox were immune to virulent smallpox
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Because of this discovery, scientists were able to develop a smallpox vaccine with the vaccinia virus, which is related to the cowpox virus
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It's possible that viruses might be crucial to the development of healthy organs. In 2011, immunologist Ken Cadwell conducted an experiment to learn more about the microbiome
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a group of about 100 trillion microbes in our bodies. The microbiome has a lot of important roles, like aiding the development of intestines
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And I love my intestines, both large and small. Dr Cadwell found that raising young mice in a completely sterile environment affected the microbiome so that their intestines didn develop normally But when he gave the mice a murine norovirus similar to the one that affects humans their intestines and immune system developed normally
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That's the virus you get on a cruise ship, right? So did he give the mice, did he put the mice on a cruise ship
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I don't want to be on that cruise ship. This study may apply to people, meaning exposure to viruses at a young age might be good for us
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But Cadwell notes that viruses affect people differently, so it won't work the same way for everyone
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There are also viruses known as phages, found in our body's mucus, like in the mouth, nose, digestive tract. Eww
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And phages actually kill unwanted bacteria. A 2013 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, found that when
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a phage was put with an E. coli bacterium in a culture, the phage was able to kill the bacteria
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Another interesting virus that's currently being studied is known as GBvirus C. Over a billion people alive today have already been infected with it at some time in their lives
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And a few experiments suggest that when someone infected with HIV also gets infected with GBVC
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the spreading of HIV might decelerate. Some experts also believe that GBVC might help a person survive Ebola, although there's
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not a lot of data on that at the moment
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