On 15-11-2010 8:54, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> Le 14/11/2010 20:22, Darren New a écrit :
>> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Fact: Virii are not "alive" in the first place, so it is not possible
>>> to "kill" them.
>>
>> It think if you have some unicellular organism (without being pedantic
>> about "cell" there, which after all just means "room" in latin),
>
> But virii are not unicelluar organism. They are very far from even being
> one.
> Virii are more like toxin: a chain of molecules, with the added bonus
> that when encountering the right cells, they get replicated by the cells
> (usually at the cost of the other functions of the cell, which induce
> the exhaustion of the cell and its death).

Contrary to chemicals they will only replicate if the set of molecules 
is in a specific configuration. If the case is broken they won't work, 
nor if the DNA is broken up in parts or all aminoacids scrambled, etc.
In most cases people like them in the broken form. You might call that 
dead, just as you might call a radio dead when in one tube the filament 
is broken. Or you might prefer to use dead and alive only for 
prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
De gustibus non est disputandum.

This thread is the first time that I consciously saw the plural virii. I 
studied latin when I was younger (indeed at the end of the age of the 
vacuum tube) so this strikes me as odd. Googling it reveals that only 
the pedantic complain that this is wrong to the point of being silly. So 
I won't complain.

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