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*Panspermia Causing Trouble?*
A Letter from Professor Chandra Wickramsinghe and Professor Sir Fred
Hoyle, FRS
December 1, 2000
Sirs,
Diseases of plants and animals have a long history of mysterious
appearances without any satisfactory explanation being offered of where
they have come from. An example some years ago was the lethal
respiratory disease that hit grey seals in the remote Siberian Lake
Baikal. Life on Earth is far too intricate to have evolved here in
isolation from the rest of the Universe.
Recent studies have shown that much of the material escaping from comets
is in the form of organic particles that cannot be distinguished from
biomaterial. The input to the Earth is estimated to be several tens of
tonnes of cometary material per day, sufficient, if it was all in the
form of bacteria, to give a daily incidence of several hundred thousand
bacteria per square metre of area. For the most part the material simply
washes away. But, in rare cases, a connection may occur and if this
escalates a new disease can be born.
Small particles of bacterial and viral sizes descend through the Earth's
stratosphere mostly during the winter months, and we believe that the
nearly unique English and Welsh practice of out-wintering cattle
explains why BSE hit English and Welsh farms more severely than
elsewhere. English and Welsh farmers move cattle frequently from field
to field, maximising their chance of picking up any pathogen that may
fall during the winter months from the air onto the grass. Once a
causative agent (genetic fragment or piece of infective protein) got
into a few cattle man took a hand, by grinding up infected animals and
including them in feed for more cattle.
We live nowadays in a blame culture, but in our view there was no
culprit, not unless blame be equated with ignorance. Indeed the
political authorities, by banning the inclusion of infected portions of
cattle in cattle feed, may be said to have acted both quickly and
responsibly.
Whether they should also have banned any use of cattle products in
medical vaccines remains another question with disturbing possibilities.
Yours faithfully,
Chandra Wickramsinghe,
Fred Hoyle,
24 Llwynypia Road,
Lisvane, Cardiff CF14 0SY
* *
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