<h1>Fear for the future is a virus and nobody likes a virus</h1>

Viruses - Viruses are not "living" creatures. They can't do anything on their own - can't move, can't change, can't feel, nothing. They are nothing until they glom onto a cell, inject their DNA, causing the host cell to change and, as a result of the change, reproduction of the virus starts and hits light speed. So many of the tiny buggers are produced that the cell explodes and floods the body with non-living warriors looking for more cells to conquer.

Viruses are therefore not our friends. They can be stony-eyed killers like ebola or smarmy hit men like the flu. They make you SICK and these one-trick zombie rascals can kill a living person. But now fellow PwP, Micheal, has pointed me in the direction of a possible cure for Alzheimer's and maybe even other brain diseases such as Parkinson's. All with the help of a VIRUS that injects itself into the e-coli bacterium and does ....well.... read the article. It is hard for me to explain. I am more of a poet than a scientist. A helpful virus is beyond my ken. I wonder why any virus, good or evil, exists. Why were they put on earth? What possible reason is there for their existence?

The answer may be a part of the Gaia hypothesis. Read about ebola in "The Hot Zone" where the author writes:

“In a sense, the Earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of the concrete all over the planet, the cancerous rot-outs in Europe, Japan and the United States, thick with replicating primates, the colonies enlarging and spreading and threatening to shock the biosphere with mass extinctions. Perhaps the biosphere does not 'like' the idea of five billion humans.”

Good news and bad news at the same time. Most life is just a zero sum game but for PWP, the scales appear to be tipping toward the positive. Are we the virus? What other weapons does Gaia have to put us in our places. I think the earth is kinder than that. We are not viruses. Sure, we are destroying the planet but we are trying to avoid killing it, aren't we?

I don't know the future but I believe it can only bring bigger and better responses in the search for a cure. No more fretting the harmful virus known as negative thinking. Fear of the future is non productive. Want proof? What good has it done for you so far?