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One universal antiviral to rule them all?

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331 points breve | 10 comments | 26 Aug 25 14:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.836s | source | bottom
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mcculley ◴[26 Aug 25 18:38 UTC] No.45030508[source]▶
I always wonder this and maybe people in the comments here know the answer: If humans had the technology to eliminate all viruses on Earth, what would be the outcome? Do viruses keep other bad things in check? Would there be bad consequences if we eliminated all viruses?
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lotsoweiners ◴[26 Aug 25 18:40 UTC] No.45030534[source]▶
Population control.
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aurizon[dead post] ◴[26 Aug 25 19:06 UTC] No.45030812[source]▶
[flagged]
olddustytrail ◴[26 Aug 25 22:08 UTC] No.45032958[source]▶
Not really. Races don't exist biologically. There are certainly traits within populations but that's a bit like my cousins tend to be fatter than my family. It's not something that can be accurately targeted.
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1. asdff ◴[26 Aug 25 22:24 UTC] No.45033104[source]▶
You'd be surprised. There is quite a bit of polymorphism within the human species that is very much distinguishable per population. E.g. haplogroup analysis or microsatellite analysis is remarkably accurate in this regard due to a lack of interaction between far flung populations until quite recently in human history. Now, does this imply all the bullshit eugenicists and other racists tend to preach about with race? Hell no, social factors are responsible for most of that variance, but to suggest there would be no biomarker for "race" in its colloquial definition as proxy for population of origin is inaccurate.

This is also why there is a big focus now to seek out underrepresented populations in genetic analysis, because there may be population specific biomarkers that are relevant in disease that you miss if you limit yourself to the handful of widely sequenced homogeneous populations (e.g. there are Utah and Iceland datasets that are popular to use for this).

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2. lanstin ◴[26 Aug 25 23:22 UTC] No.45033561[source]▶
What there isn't is a small number of distinct subgroups that are more related to each other than to the other subgroups.
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3. asdff ◴[26 Aug 25 23:33 UTC] No.45033648[source]▶
There is, due to the way humans migrated and geographically isolated themselves over human history where founder effect, genetic drift, and evidence for introgression (both within our species and from hybridization with other species of hominids) is easily appreciated among populations even today.
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4. djrj477dhsnv ◴[27 Aug 25 00:10 UTC] No.45033908[source]▶
Sure there are. An easy example is Australian aboriginals. They were geographically isolated for tens of thousands of years. Their subgroups are more related to each other than to other subgroups.
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5. lanstin ◴[27 Aug 25 05:35 UTC] No.45035791{3}[source]▶
http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/CommonAncestors/Nature...

Strong statistical signals but no sharp lines between groups - we as a species like travel and sex.

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6. darkwater ◴[27 Aug 25 07:25 UTC] No.45036488[source]▶
Not an expert but I don't think that still qualifies as biological differences in races. I mean, obviously we are all biological different and it seems obvious as well that if a group of people stays isolated enough it will develop and reinforce differences to other groups.

For example the Basque population has clear genetic differences to the rest of the Iberian and Westerner population [1] but that doesn't make them a different race.

Race is just a social construct, mostly based on visual traits.

[1] https://www.ibe.upf-csic.es/news/-/asset_publisher/PXTgqZXxl...

7. asdff ◴[28 Aug 25 02:02 UTC] No.45047508{4}[source]▶
Depends on the group. Oldie but goodie (1). Salient quote: "The Mormon gene frequencies are similar to those of their northern European ancestors. This is explained by the large founding size of the Mormon population and high rates of gene flow. In contrast, the religious isolates (Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites) show marked divergence from their ancestral populations and each other, due to isolation and random genetic drift. "

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1684477/

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8. lanstin ◴[29 Aug 25 16:33 UTC] No.45066229{3}[source]▶
That is one relatively isolated group. The existence of small isolated groups does not mean the whole species has a small number of distinct subgroups. The smallness here is intended to apply to the number of groups, with the size of the groups being correspondingly large.
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9. lanstin ◴[29 Aug 25 16:35 UTC] No.45066260{5}[source]▶
As above, a few relatively isolated groups has no bearing on the truth of the proposition that all members fall into a small number of distinct groups with large numbers of members.

If you map out the reproductive connections betweeen these various small groups, they all connect quickly in terms of evolution.

10. djrj477dhsnv ◴[31 Aug 25 07:50 UTC] No.45081286{4}[source]▶
The boundaries between groups may be blurred, but surely a person whose ancestors lived in location A for the last 10 thousand years will be genetically more similar om average to other people from that location than to people in location B on the other side of the planet.