Word: burnet
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...move in a twilight zone between life and inanimate matter, scientists used to think that they might represent the primitive beginnings of life. Many experts now believe that it is the other way around. One of the world's top virus authorities, Australia's Dr. Frank M. Burnet, a champion of the evolution-in-reverse theory, contends that viruses may once have been bacteria and that they are steadily degenerating into more simple forms...
...Burnet thinks that man has less to fear from viruses than from bacteria. An outstanding fact about viruses, says he, is that their well-being depends on the health of their host. Unlike bacteria and insects, which are often out-&-out rivals of man, viruses can live only as long as the human being they infect. Unfortunately for the host, viruses often commit suicide by killing the patient. But in the long run, says Burnet, the virus varieties with the best chance of survival are those that "live & let live." Many of the viruses that infect man have evolved into...
...Vulnerable Minority. Many virus diseases that chronically attack man-measles, mumps, chickenpox, herpes (blistered lips)-are mild. Serious epidemics, Burnet says, usually arise 1) in a susceptible population that has not been exposed to the virus, or 2) from a virulent new virus produced by a change in an old form...
Isolated groups of men in Spitsbergen and Greenland, Burnet points out, generally withstand the arctic winter without illness but summer's first ship brings a violent epidemic of colds. Doctors think that vulnerable victims catch it from carriers who are immune through constant exposure. Even great flu epidemics like the 1918 pandemic, says Burnet, attack only a vulnerable minority of the population. And most flu epidemics quickly run their course, leaving the population immune, at least temporarily, to another epidemic...
Overton growled: "The Senator from Ohio [Taft] is not yet the whole Senate, no matter what he may think about it." South Carolina's Burnet Maybank shouted hoarsely: "After all, Mississippi is a sovereign state." After all, Bilbo was Mississippi's choice. Bilbo slouched at his old desk, clutching his cigar...