Is SARS Virus A Harbinger from Another World

Is SARS Virus an Alien Visitor from Another World?

(This article was originally written in 2003, deleted and reposted on Thursday, 16 December, 2021)

This essay is reproduced here during the current (2020) Covid-19 pandemic since the story is the same in the eyes of this author.

 Another similar 40 pages (10,838 words) abridged essay, titled:

“2020: War of the Worlds:  Earthlings vs. the Corona Virus” among the list  was posted in Ir. Lau Tai Onn blog here:

https://taionn.blogspot.com/search?q=list+of+lim+ju+boo+articles

The above abridged link was condensed from the author’s original 78,685 words dissertation under the same title.

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 Dear friends and all, 

 Thank you so much for all your hundreds of letters (received in 2003).

 Thank you to Ir. Tan Seng Khoo, Simon Chow, Professor Dr. SH Goh, Dr MT Cheng, Ms. June Lai, Dr. Janet See, Mr. Ismail, Dr. May Wei, Dr. Amir Farik Ishak, Mr. Vellu (or was it Vaidoo?), and many more who have written to me to ask.

 Thank you so much. I have read your versions about SARS and its connection with Sadam Hussein’s biological weapons, about God, about epidemics, about pigs and eating pork, about Jesus Christ, about Bush and Tony Blair, about future predictions, about astrology, about the Bible and the animals, about fasting, about Ir. Tan Seng Khoo’s cinema release of his new movies which he directed himself in Chow Kit, and Old Klang Roads, and all your various thoughts and associations with this outbreak of SARS.

 I am really quite confused by all your ideas. Your mails are too plentiful, and very amusing, but it is not possible to reply, except to thank you all for your great and funny ideas.

 In reply to all your different theories and questions put to me about this SARS epidemic let me share with you my own hypothesis.

 Current Theory:

 I am taking a further step away from my original thinking that the suspect atypical pneumonia coronavirus which currently affects humans was a zoonotic disease, had jumped the species barrier from animals to humans.

That original thought was based on the fact that most strains of coronavirus (CoV) affect mainly animals damaging their respiratory and alimentary systems, including the liver (hepatitis). In pigs, according to the literature, coronavirus affects only their digestive system causing gastroenteritis, but not their respiratory system as seen in birds. We think that a new strain of CoV is now affecting the respiratory system in humans.

 First isolated in 1937, the coronaviruses have always been an avian (bird) virus, affecting chicken causing infectious bronchitis. Since then, it started to infect other systems in a lot of other animals – cattle, horses, pigs, turkey, dogs, cats, rats, and mice. A few strains responsible for most of the common colds in humans were isolated in the 1960’s from the nasal cavities of patients with common colds. In fact they were responsible for about 30 % of the common colds in humans after the rhinoviruses.

 Currently it is believed that some members of this CoV which previously affected mainly animals could have mutated in such a way that it could now jump the animal-human barrier to present an entirely new feature in human respiratory disease.

 Lessons Taught in RNA-based Virology:

 In my original letter as a reply to the late Ms. Tan Cheng Sim’s letter, I thought this hypothesis could be the most probable aetiological (causative) explanation. It originated in the Guangdong Province of South China and Hong Kong where living conditions were crowded in flats, and where the Chinese keep their ducks, hens, goose, rabbits, birds, snakes, goats, pigs, cats and dogs as part of their ‘family members’.

This closely knitted ‘nucleated family’ structure between animals and humans could have made a break in the species barrier pathogenesis. After all, scientists have all along believed it needs only some structural changes in the RNA configuration on the virus during the mutation process to lock onto the receptor cells of humans.

 The structure of the coronavirus genome is a single strand, unlike the double helix DNA strand in higher organisms. Its genome has over 30,000 nucleotides (about 32 kilo base long on a single strand of RNA), and is probably the largest RNA virus genome. 

 We know this using an analytical technique in molecular genetics called Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) to determine short sequences of RNA / DNA without the need to clone it. It was one technique I remember learning during my training in medical biotechnology a few years ago.

 I remember in our practical class we used restriction enzymes (DNA-cutting enzymes) to cut off the DNA at a particular sequence of the nucleotides, making templates for copying, and joining them again using DNA ligases to produce different sorts of recombinant DNA (rDNA) later. 

I also remember Southern blotting where we use blood samples to sequence segments of the DNA using probes. I remember it took us at least two days to sequence just a small segment of the DNA. I remember using an ultra-centrifuge to spin down a sample overnight. 

It was very slow and tedious those days, probably they were  old methods. These days sequencing is very much faster using such technology like the Sanger sequencing. It is used for accuracy, which is also time-saving for long lengths of DNA, inexpensive, and is able to detect insertions and deletions such as in mutation.  

It was one heck of biotechnology and molecular biology that some 15 of us - doctors and medical researchers and scientists selected from ASEAN countries for their Regional ASEAN training program where we  learn from a team of French experts which was held at the Institute for Medical Research in Malaysia (IMR).

It was our 3 month-long Regional In-Service Postgraduate Training some years ago. Besides biotechnology, medical statistics  was another area taught to some 60 doctors and medical scientists from ASEAN countries during a separate  program as part of our postgraduate training in Epidemiology and Tropical Diseases some years later that was also held at the IMR.

 One of the things we gained learning biotechnology was  PCR analysis, and  its applications in our understanding in genome sequencing including sequencing the genomic make-up of viruses.  

On SARS virus these groups of viruses are unusual in the sense they have the highest frequency of recombination of any positive strand RNA virus, meaning that it has the highest ability of combining genetic information from other sources. This makes them capable of mutating into other forms.  So far so good, so the virologists believe.

 But how do viruses attack in general? The mechanisms vary from virus to virus. In HIV for instance, the RNA of HIV attacks the immune bodies such as the lymphocytes, monocytes etc., and gain entry into the body through receptor sites. Once the virus enters the human cell, it duplicates itself by a mechanism called reverse transcription through the help of reverse transcription enzyme (nucleoside reverse transcription). This changes the viral RNA into DNA to mimic the DNA profile of the host cells.

 This coy cheat the body cells into integration and acceptance of the virus. By a process called translation (reading) of messenger RNA (mRNA), the end result is a cascade of intracellular events that cause the virus to multiply rapidly inside the cell until it dies.

 In the SARS case, the coronavirus probably (I believe, but I am uncertain), attacks the cells in the lung parenchyma – lung tissues that are responsible for gasses exchange and respiratory functions. Lungs cells involved could probably be the CD8+ve cells, the poorly-differentiated cells, ciliated cells, mucous cells, Clara-like cells, and the typical basal cells. Probably the tracheal tissues may also be involved?

 The mechanism of attack and multiplication is probably similar to most other viral infection? This sequence of events in viral infection and transmission is not something new to most of us although the mechanisms in viral pathogenesis may not be an exact mirror image for every viral infection.

 Viral Transmission and Pathogenesis:

 Given our current understanding on the dynamics of transmission, any route of invasion is possible, at least theoretically. It is a matter how the virus transcribes itself directionally to find its way from host-to-host, viz. animals-to-animals, animals-to-humans, and humans-to-humans. Transgenic mutation is real, and it can occur naturally as the result of environment changes, radiation, and exposure to mutagenic chemicals, including being challenged by the immunoglobulin (antibodies) of the host. It can even be manipulated artificially. In fact, genetic engineering is the basis of biotechnology for better hybrids of plants and animals.

Given the possibility that SARS coronavirus is a mutant of a previously existing family of coronaviruses, one very crucial question remains unanswered. That is, where did the first coronavirus on Earth come into existence? Scientists have been running hither and thither with theories trying to find out where the first virus originated. Were these groups of corona viruses merely mutant forms of one another, or were they actually new separate viruses as separate entities coming from somewhere else outside this planet?

In short, do all the existing viruses mutate into new ones, or were the new ones actually brought here from another world?

Is it either this, or they were actually some mutant CoV that managed to cross the animal barrier to infect humans? Did it actually jump the species barrier, or could it already exist in humans in a less variant form, considering that this atypical pneumonia virus exhibits pathogenic features quite differently from the rest of the Coronavirus family?

As far as we know, the common cold coronavirus strain, and other rhinoviruses underwent mutation periodically, so virologists believe. Because of these rapid variations in mutagenic directions, no specific vaccine, or even poly-vaccines against all viruses can be formulated?

 Mutation and Immunological Defences:

 The next question we need to address is why did these viruses undergo mutation? Virologists will tell us they need to change in order to survive because of harsher environmental changes, mimicking a small-scale evolution perhaps? But is this entirely true? 

Couldn’t they have survived happily without undergoing RNA structural transformations since there are hundreds of billions of hosts (animals and man) on earth upon which their RNA can be transcribed and copied again and again in the unlimited supply of hosts? Are they suddenly so defenceless against us when we have not had even an iota of chance acquiring any specific antibodies against them?

If not, why then did they change or evolve into a new strain or species as scientists have until now believe. Wouldn’t an alternative explanation be more probable, in that the new virus did not actually evolve from an older strain, but was actually an entirely new form of life that came down on us from outside this planet? In short, the current SARS virus has absolutely no ‘blood relationship’ with the rest of the family of CoV  perhaps yet to emerge?

 This is the question we want to challenge our learned and elite scientific and medical colleagues to answer. Identifying a new virus is already a very daunting scientific task, but is not impossible. One method we have already explained is to study its genome sequencing, and the length of its bases (A,T,G, C nucleotide) chain through PCR analysis. But attempting to prove with certainty that it evolved from some existing known strain is even more intimidating.

 The author's original thought that SARS may be zoonotic in origin could be dead wrong, and this letter will give me a chance to retrieve that hypothesis. After all, we were only picking up the bits and pieces here and there from our current understanding in virology. We merely followed the belief of the rest of the scientific community. Initially, I too went along with them.

 Current hypothesis of virologists that a similar large base CoV virus underwent some structural changes in their RNA (ribonucleic acid), perhaps in the sequencing and the translocation of their nucleotides to generate this new strain may be quite wrong. But now I strongly believe I was wrong too if I follow their trend of thinking.

 So, we think that new strains from existing ones are evolved because of unfavourable environmental changes that threaten their existence? We also think that these changes put new challenges and surprises on our immunological surveillance. When our immunological status becomes compromised, they attack.

 Once suitable and specific antibodies – immunoglobulin like IgA, IgD, IgE, IgG and IgM are produced naturally by the body to combat the antigen (the virus), the virus no longer has a hold. They just go away, or they may mutate into another form. They may re-establish their invasion in the body in another form to survive.

 In short, this would be a logical sequence in evolution. This scenario explained here in the simplest way we could possibly illustrate, is a theory that is quite well accepted by the scientific / medical community. But…. is this true? It was something that we, as students studied years ago, taught in the elite schools of immunology, virology, medicine and biomedical sciences.

 Creation or Evolution:

Looking back, that was what medical and biomedical students were taught in classical microbiology. That was history. But now we need not follow the teachings of our learned university professors, but to have a mind of our own to think analytically and independently. Three very haunting questions therefore we would like to ask members of the scientific community.

 Firstly, where did the first RNA fragment surface on Earth? Was it created by God or was it evolved out of emptiness?

 Secondly, how terribly sure are we that this new virus was actually an extension or evolved from another virus through the process of mutation?

 Thirdly, what evidence do we have that SARS viruses were transmitted from animals to generate this new disease? Can any of us out there be able to answer with the appropriate findings in the literature?

Does this line of thought conform to evidence-based virology or evidence-based medicine? Could we challenge the scientific community who may come up with the hypothesis that a member of the CoV self-orchestrated its own genetic engineering to confront the animal- human hosts with this new threat?

 In hindsight, I am more inclined to believe that this new viral emergence had never originated from this Earth before. They probably came from another world to this Planet Earth as an Alien

 Dark clouds of comets from outer space periodically bathe the Earth with cosmic dust as they pass by in the neighborhood of the Sun and Earth. These gigantic ‘dirty snowballs’ as comets are described, have been seeding Earth with complex life-giving organic compounds each time Earth intercepts the trails of dust left behind by a passing comet. Both execute an orbit around the Sun, and at some point, Earth would intersect the path left by a passing comet.

 

Sometimes, comets would plunge straight into the Sun, never to come up anymore. Most would pass round and round the Sun, and each time it comes near the Sun, the heat and radiation from the Sun would ‘boil off’ the ‘dirty snow ball’ to leave a trail of comet’s debris in its wake. Even without the comets, astronomers already know that hundreds of millions and micrometeorites (about 300 million of them) pepper the Earth’s atmosphere every day.

 Dozens of larger meteorites fall directly onto the Earth’s surface daily. All told, some 1000 metric tons of cosmic debris rained down on Earth everyday even without a single comet seen in Earth’s neighbourhood. This figure rises tens of hundreds of times when the Earth orbits (passes) through the tail of a passing comet.

In ancient times, all civilizations viewed Comets as a harbinger of bad omen, plagues, disease and Black Death! Where did all the ancient civilizations get all that information and wisdom from? They seemed to know better. May we request doctors and scientists to look upwards above them towards heavens?

 New alien life forms have been falling on our heads without us realizing them. They fall not only on our heads, but on our roof-tops, over our gardens, on our neighbour’s fences and door steps, our sheep, cows, ducks, goats, pigs, chicken, goose, dogs and cats.

We have all along been looking sideways with myopic eyes, and an introverted mind, blaming on our poor animals, and on one another, including our neighbour’s unkempt gardens, the food we eat or don’t eat, etc. Like a gardener or a farmer who scatters numerous seeds on the ground, some will take root and bear fruits, others will just lie there, barren forever.

 Some of these alien RNA, viruses, infectious prion (half a life, half inanimate atypical proteinaceous virus-like particles) have been raining all over us daily without us being aware of it. We didn’t look up, but always sideways at our ducks and geese, and suspiciously at another human fellow, or downwards at our soil for the origin of these new ‘mutant variants of viruses’.

 These viruses may have been mutating very fast as virologists claimed, but they mutate only once they reach earth. They may have remained deeply frozen in the frigid and darkness of outer space, perhaps for hundreds of thousand, or millions of years before they arrive on Earth to mutate and multiply.

 An Alien Invasion:

 We blame air-crafts and rapid air travel for spreading infectious diseases from one country to another, like someone scattering those seeds on the soil as they travel along. Would it be more reasonable, applying the same scientific logic, that a much, much bigger, and much more efficient space-craft, called a Comet, has been doing exactly the same job? 

 These natural space-crafts carry thousands of millions of tons of hibernating ‘biological passengers’ - these new biological fragments of life and viruses from another world to pepper down on our Earth, over our heads every day.

 Look upwards, and not sideways or down your feet where the mud is, my dear doctors and research scientists! It’s coming from up there, not sideways from our neighbour’s fences, or from our poultry’s pens. Naturally, once they infect a person, the viruses will quickly spread on to the next nearest person in contact. But none of the patients simply got it out of nothing. Nothing begets nothing!

  Did our dear and learned virologists think of this mode of transmission? There is absolutely no point studying these viruses in detail under an electron microscope, or sequencing their genome using PCR analysis or Southern Block technique (to separate the DNA fragments by Gel Electrophoresis). There are now far better and much faster sequencing techniques such as the Sanger sequencing technique available to us.

Virologists and health authorities waste a lot of their time doing this. It is exactly and precisely like a motorist getting out of his car to open his car bonnet and study how his car engine works in a massive traffic jam in his futile attempt to explain what causes that massive jam, or in his attempt to prevent that massive jam. 

What relationship has his car engine got to do with that jam? That motorist would have done a lot, lot better had he taken a helicopter up and had a bird’s eye view of the whole situation, and to study where that bottle-neck is instead of looking at his car engine for the cause or a solution. How idiotic!

My dear colleagues in science and medicine, I think should we look at the whole problem with a bird’s eye view (holistically), and not using our electron microscope to study the problem even much smaller until all we see are just clusters or strands of molecules. Shouldn’t we look at them on a much larger mega-scale? The heavens are bizarrely huge, and this tiny, tiny Earth is like a subatomic particle lost in a mighty, mighty, mighty cosmic ocean. Wouldn’t that be in the right direction?

 As it is, virologists are trying to solve a problem by looking at the nucleotides of the virus. The problem with us in the scientific community is that we tend to specialize far too much, such that we lose sight of the surrounding environment, specializing looking just at the molecules and atoms.

With narrower and narrower specialization, our views become more and more clouded, and our eyes become more and more myopic (short-sighted). We begin to lose touch with the reality of the entire whole picture. How does examining the molecular details of the SARS virus help us in prevention and treatment when the dust is all falling all over on our heads from above? I am very aware and prepared for what the virologists will reply to me.

 They will sharply reply by saying that by looking at the molecular configurations, and identifying the virus, it will help clinicians diagnose SARS and separate it from other pneumonia-like respiratory diseases. Diagnose, yes. 

 In medicine this is called ‘differential diagnosis’ Next they will reply by claiming that they will be able to develop a vaccine for SARS.  They call this a treatment (cure) or a prophylaxis (prevention) perhaps?

 We are aware  theoretically, by studying the structure of the viral RNA, and the mechanisms by which they invade the body, we can design a drug that can block that mechanism, the receptor site of the cells perhaps? Alternatively, we may try identifying the viral E protein (gene) that may be responsible for viral RNA/DNA transcription and replication, and pharmacological ways of damaging / blocking that synthesis?

 So far so good, at least this is what we understand from our theoretical classical knowledge. But what happens if the virus starts to mutate and change their molecular configurations? In that case, neither an (antiviral) drug, nor any vaccine will work, as it took the blocking (locking) mechanisms of! f gear. So our treatment protocol and our vaccination will still come to naught – wasted efforts, I may add.

Myopic Sight and Vaccination:

 Microbiologists (virologists, bacteriologist’s mycologists, protozoa parasitologists) and pharmacologists have been explaining the pharmacodynamics and mode of action of drugs against microbial invasions to us all these years. Despite all those pharmacology and microbiology lectures, did we manage to stop HIV, hepatitis, or even just the simple common cold, and now SARS from spreading? We credit the eradication of smallpox and poliomyelitis to the vaccines, but many quarters have already questioned the validity of this claim.

They believe that both smallpox and poliomyelitis died a natural death after some time, with or without vaccines, and I personally also believe in what they called it as “herd immunity” or shared or transferred immunity as I would like to coin it.

In some measure we might have some successes with Diptheria, Tetanus and Pertussis (whooping cough), H. Influenza, Polio (with Salk injectable or Sabin oral), Rotavirus in children’s diarrhoea and gastroenteritis and against Measles, Mumps and Rubella (German measles) and against Varicella (chicken pox). Yes / no? This issue is very debatable even among health providers, and we shall not go into that.

Smallpox vaccination is perhaps the most successful campaign against the variola (smallpox) virus and WHO declared smallpox eradicated in 1980 after intensive vaccination started in 1961 with the last case recorded in Somalia in 1977. It broke out again in 1978 after a small laboratory accident in Birmingham.

Some medical opponents are against vaccinations, and they have even spoken out against the value of vaccination. They publish data, findings and opinion in the Lancet and medical journals questioning the value of such prophylactic measures.

 They also question the safety of these vaccinations, quoting the authoritative CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta) study in 1977 that 11,365 vaccine adverse effects were recorded, compared to 7,535 cases of benefits from vaccine-preventable-disease (documented by CDC).

 It is rumored that because of safety and questionable benefits, even the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair did not allow his children to be vaccinated? Because of some of these findings and publications, there is now a growing group in the medical circle against unnecessary vaccination, supported by a number of lawsuits by members of the public in America, Britain and Europe caught up in this controversy. The Spanish flu and great influenza which swept across Europe and America killing two million people in 1918 as an example died a natural death without the help of vaccines.

 A lot of people are now questioning the benefits of vaccination, when other modalities such as good nutrition, proper housing, clean water supply, clean air, and clean environment and other measures would have done the same job? Without these realities of proper and healthy living, giving vaccination to solve a health problem is like sweeping dirt under a carpet to cover up reality (so that it! looks ‘healthy’ on the front). But we shall not go into all these debates as we can write chapters without end on this issue. This is not the topic of our discussion.

Diseases and Plagues in the Bible:

Plagues, pestilence, famine, disease and pandemic are not just realities we experience in science. 

It is not what science tells us, but what even the Bible tells us that these pandemics will occasionally plague this world.

Even in the beginning during Moses’ time there were already a number of plagues over the land of ancient Egypt. They were, water turning into blood (Ex. 7:14–240), frogs everywhere (Ex. 7:25–8:11/15), lice or gnats (Ex. 8:12–15/8:16–19), wild animals or flies (Ex. 8:16–28/8:20–32), pestilence of livestock (Ex. 9:1–7), boils (Ex. 9:8–12), locusts (Ex. 10:1–20), darkness for three days (Ex. 10:21–29), death of firstborn (Ex. 11:1–12:3.

 In Lev. 26:25, when Israel falls into covenant violations, God says, “I will send pestilence among you.” In II Chronicles 6:28, Solomon spoke of pestilence, famine or blight.

 In II Chron. 7:13, God says that if he sends pestilence, the people can pray and humble themselves (v. 14). In II Sam. 24:15, God sends a pestilence that kills 70,000 Israelites because of David’s ill-conceived census.

 Jesus says in Luke 21:11 that there will be plagues. Both Ezekiel and Jeremiah speak of God sending down plagues as in Ezek. 14:21 and 33:27, and Jer. 21:6, 7 and 9. 

In Psalm 91:5-6, it says that we should not fear the terror of the night, the arrow of the day, the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that comes at noon. 

All these plagues and pestilences were some kind of disease and epidemic sent down to Earth, and were never originated or sprouted out by themselves on this planet. How could they, out from nothing? They were clearly sent down by God from above. He does not live here in this world to create them here. He sent them down from above. 

For instance, in Rev. 6:8, it speaks of “Pale Rider” kills a fourth of the earth with the sword, famine, and pestilence. How could a “Pale Rider” come from Earth except seen in the sky somewhere? They must have come from another world.

Absolutely, and completely none of these phenomena plaguing this world in ancient past till currently can be explained using our earthy science. We merely run hither and tither desperately trying to find ways how to prevent a pandemic outbreak, and looking for some kind of a 'cure' for them such as using all kinds of controversial drugs and vaccines. 

But those swords pierced onto this world will eventually be withdrawn from us as God promised as with all past and ancient diseases, pestilences, with or without any of our defenses and unnecessary interventions. Bear this trustfully in Him in our mind. 

He speaks far, far more powerfully than all our sciences and technologies 

 

The Biological Cosmic Warheads:

But if we still believe in what scientists tell us rather than what the Bible reveal to us, then we go back to square one again trying to explain mysteries on diseases we don't understand especially their origin. I think our vision is being blinked and blinded with blinkers on. 

Are we  not scientifically logical enough to challenge the rational of looking at genomes of this SARS to solve the problem instead of looking at it holistically like the view seen by a bird soaring high into the air to examine the causes of a traffic jam, the bottleneck, and the extent the jam was spreading, and in which direction, while that poor myopic motorist down there on the ground was still trying to sort the problem of the jam by looking at his car engine (the RNA) under the bonnet (the viral coating) ? 

 Poor chap, I must say. He will never be able to solve that traffic jam problem by looking under his car bonnet. Looking under the bonnet and RNA, to my mind is a blinded way of understanding and solving this problem. We will land up trying to solve the hepatitis, HIV and the common cold problems. These jams still persist.

 Wouldn’t it be reasonable if we were now to tell ourselves that our nostrils were pointing downwards, and not upwards to minimize our risk of inhaling cosmic particles that float downwards?  After all, do we need to question the Wisdom of God who designed and created us? He ensured that our nostrils need be pointed downwards during His Masterpiece Blueprint, and not upwards to prevent us from directly receiving those infective and hostile prion (virus-like) particles floating down on us to protect us from harm’s way?

Isn’t He (God) such a wonderful, wonderful and brilliant Designer and Protector of life!  

 Think about this wonderful design my dear scientists and counterparts. Open up our eyes and minds heavenwards. Unto Him we must praise. You, me, and all living things on Earth originated from out there, made from star dust that He created, along with the viruses.

 Hibernation in Deep Freeze:

 Cosmic dust containing complex mixtures of organic molecules, probably containing DNA fragments as well, not to say single-stranded RNA, are precursors and signatures of all life. They are being released out there by comets passing by. These passing comets release hundreds of thousands of tons of these ‘biological passengers’ each time they come near the ‘space-port’ of our Sun. The heat, light and radiation of our Sun merely melt their icy loads of ‘biological passengers’ (truly biological weapons) into our ‘port of call’ (Earth), and seed them onto our earthly abode.

 This is like water vapour, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons being discharged into our atmosphere by passing aircrafts that constantly pollute and damage the atmosphere, and rain them on the surface.

 If this hypothesis on the mechanism proposed here is correct, then life is actually seeded into Earth and allowed to germinate (created) here. God created it from (star) dust. Life does not spring up spontaneously out of nothing. Nothing begets nothing! 

 It has to come from somewhere, and this needs to be created. An extremely hot Earth in the very beginning was completely sterile and void of all life. Life was brought in like seeds being scattered on cooled, sterile ground. When watered, some will germinate right here, others will just lie barren.

 Life, including the nucleotides (RNA and DNA) can never suddenly make their appearance out of nothing.

 It makes no scientific sense to me to say that a new virus called the atypical pneumonia virus came out from nowhere. Even if we got it from our family duck, where did that poor pet duck get it from in the first place? Why blame the poor duck, or the “Chinese in Guandong Province '' They blamed the Chinese who eat anything. They blamed it on Chinese food, so the Canadians believe? They blamed it on anything – the emails I received contained all those ‘aetiologies.

Neither did the SARS virus originate from our neighbour’s house, or from a hospital patient, or someone who did not wash their hands or wear a face mask? The most reckless thing we have come across is to put the blame on innocent ducks, chickens, pigs, goats or on the Chinese from South China.

 The Chinese have been eating their food for over 9,000 years, and yet their nutritious foods have enabled them to work so hard, produce so prolifically, and thrive so healthily by the tens of billions over the generations of the tens of centuries. Did the Chinese get SARS before March 2003 AD? Why only from Guandong Province, and not all the Chinese in the world got it simultaneously?

 Personally I am convinced that the present atypical pneumonia SARS virus is an entirely life form brought here to Earth by cosmic dust. Organic molecules carried by the periodically passing comets may have been responsible. These inert life forms must have taken a very, long journey from another world, from another ‘country’ you may say, to spread their seedlings to another world – our Earth, as a ‘foreign country’ (new ground) you may say.

 This analogy and reasoning is exactly like what the health authorities are talking about all the time - spreading the disease from one country to another country via fast jet airliners. They are right in many senses. Many infectious diseases are imported by rapid travels.

 But we never look at it beyond the shores of this very, very tiny Earth. Unfortunately, we have become so myopic (short- sighted) because of our narrower, narrower specialization. We merely looked at the ravine below, and jumped downwards at the deep blue sea, not realizing that the seeding has all the while been raining down on us over our heads from above.

 Even without the comets, astronomers already know that hundreds of millions and micrometeorites (about 300 million of them) pepper the Earth’s atmosphere every day. Dozens of larger meteorites fall directly onto the Earth’s surface daily.

 Cosmic Debris into Oceans:

 All told, 1,000 metric tons of microscopic cosmic debris rain down on Earth every day, even without a single comet seen in Earth’s neighbourhood. The discharge load could be another 100,000 times more massive when a comet is around. How much cosmic debris they rain down, depends on their mass, size, distance and the constituency of these cosmic dirty snow-balls.

 This figure rises tens of hundreds of times when the Earth orbits through the tail of a passing comet.

 Three quarter of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans and most of the cosmic debris would fall there

 The researchers say that the virus, or a trigger that causes it, is deposited throughout space by dust in the debris stream of comets, which are thought by many researchers to harbour organic material.

 As Earth passes through the stream, dust (and perhaps the virus) enters our atmosphere, where it can lodge for two decades or more, until gravity pulls it down

 "The intense solar activity at sunspot maximum that causes bright displays of aurorae also has the effect of driving viral particles or their triggers rapidly to ground level," the researchers say

 New horizons in oceanography and genomics were opened up early March, 2004 with the publication by Craig Venter and colleagues in a pilot study to shotgun clone and sequencing of microbial genomes filtered from seawater in the Sargasso Sea, off the coast of Bermuda

 Unknown 1.2 million new genes were found in the oceans in a single sweep of the ocean waters

(Science,DOI:10.1126/Science.1093857, March 4,2004)

 We want to specially target this piece of information to the health authorities, especially to the virologists, the epidemiologists and other medical scientists, including the clinicians that untold numbers of new genetic materials were found in the oceans that could give rise to pathogenesis and not just known pathogens found on land among animals and in humans through cross infections and other routes of transmissions

 We think it is high time doctors learn some astronomy to realize that infectious agents, especially the new ones, could come from outer space, and not just from our neighbour’s house, or the next village. It may originate and start from there. Once down, they tend to spread out, and invade from the ground like those paramilitary invaders who came parachuting down from the air and planes

 Don’t be myopic dear colleagues, scientists and doctors. Look above our heads, and understand that you, I and every living creature on Earth first originated from out there too.

 A Container Ship of Biological Goods:

Think about this. Only the simplest form – the organic molecules, and at best, only the RNA of viruses could survive this terribly, terribly long, long journey through the cold, cold, frigid chasm of deep, deep space. These biological loads of ‘passengers’ would need to be hibernated at almost zero Kelvin (near absolute temperature of - 270 degrees Celsius) to stabilize their molecular structures after they were assembled somewhere out there in interstellar space. We are very much less than a drop of water in a colossally huge ocean.

We are all surrounded by unknown things – cosmic dust, interstellar dark matter. Some will have complex organic molecules, and simple life forms in them, others none. They must have been assembled (individual component parts) and packed into ‘container ships’ - that chuck of icy, dirty snowball of the comet’s head, before they were shipped out from their ‘factory’ for ‘export’ into a foreign land.

They were shipped out by those exceedingly fast ‘space containers’ called comets to another foreign world, just like we do here with factory components and spare parts to be reassembled in another country of import.

 These ‘biological goods’ (as I coin them) need to be encapsulated in deep freezing temperatures near absolute temperature in order to ‘survive’ that horrendously long, frigid and dark journey. They will also need an extremely fast space-craft (the comet) to hurtle them through that bizarre long, long, interstellar (between the stars) journey, from the Oort Cloud. 

Oort Cloud:

This is a titanic dark Cloud enveloping us all round was named after the Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort. This intimidating Cloud is believed to surround the entire Solar System. These ‘war-ships’ of unimaginable magnitude and masses are all docked and ready at a distance of 50,000 AU or about 0.75 light year away.

(One AU or Astronomical Unit is the mean distance between the Sun and the Earth, or approximately 150,000,000 km away).

If we need the exact figure, it is 149,597,870.691 km, and one light-year which is the distance light travels in a year at a near velocity of 300,000 km per second. A light year is approximately 10 million, million km or 1 followed by 13 zeros km This Cloud contains swarms of comets some one trillion (one million, million, or 1 followed by 12 zeros) in numbers.

This Cloud from outer space is like a harbour docking container ships carrying  bits of unassembled biological 'weapons' no different from goods manufactured in one country, and shipped out in container ships in their parts to be assembled in another country for mass destructions.

 Once these frozen biological parts are sowed in the oceans where life-giving water are in plenty, they will germinate into new life forms and arise on land to be hosted by animals and humans

 The Cosmic Patrol: A Trillion Hydrogen Bombs:

 The Oort Cloud as mentioned, is a huge mass of looming and dark gathering of comets (‘natural container space ships’) surrounding our entire Solar System menacingly. Each of them contains warheads of biological weapons of true magnitude of mass destruction. It is estimated that in the Oort Cloud there are about a trillion of these comets surrounding not just us, but the entire Solar System – all ready to be sent out as disease-carrying war-heads.

Even if they are all sterile, each of them is so huge and massive, that if just one of them were to crash onto Earth, their destruction by mere physical punch alone, is to the tune of 140,000 times more than the entire nuclear arsenal in the world fired simultaneously. This magnitude from just a single comet, far, far exceeds all the nuclear weapons of  former President George Bush, Tony Blair, or countries like China, France, and Russia, or Iran, Pakistan, India, perhaps Israel as well, put together. 

Power of a Comet:

We have already calculated this out before. Imagine a typical comet 10 km wide (radius 5000 metres).

It will have a volume = 4/3. Pi. R^3 = 5.23 X 10^11 cubic metres.

 A typical density of a comet is 3,000 kg per cubic metre. Thus, the total mass is in the order of 1.5708 X 10^15 kg. Its velocity near the vicinity of the Sun’s pull (accelerating as it comes nearer and nearer) is in the region of 60 km (60,000 metres) per second. The kinetic energy developed would be ½ mv^2 = 2.8 X 10^24 Joules (where m = mass, mv = final velocity).

 Most of the hydrogen bombs on Earth are only a megaton (1 million tons of TNT) each in power.

 At one megaton, each nuclear bomb delivers 4 x 10^15 Joules of energy. It is estimated the current stock-pile of all the nuclear arsenals in the world is about 5,000 one megaton. This means if all the nuclear devices were to be put together, and exploded at the same time, the total energy released is 2 X 10 ^19 Joules.

 The impact of a typical comet just calculated out would be in the order of 2.8 X 10^24 Joules. This means that a single impact of just a single comet on Earth is equivalent to 140,000 times more than all the thermonuclear devices in this entire world. That alone makes a comet not a biological warhead, but a destructive bomb of unimaginable magnitude if it were to collide with Earth.  Isn’t this fascinating?

 And, what’s more. There are 1 trillion of these comets hiding and waiting out there already in the Oort Cloud, all docked some 0.75 light years away.

 We do not even know how many of them carry biological weapons of untold latency, and ready-to-call-up for war and destruction, not just for this tiny Earth, but to the entire Solar System perhaps? The Bible speaks of a great star called Wormwood which fell into the sea and men and creatures were destroyed (Revelation 8:8-11).

 Clusters of these comets periodically come to our neighbourhood, make a circuit to patrol around us, making periodic checks in groups as if to see what we are doing.

 Previously at the time of writing in 2003 they were fighting with Saddam Hussein, Osama fighting with George Bush, Israel with Palestine perhaps? Each of them made our infinitesimal and crude man-made weapons pale in comparison?

While all these things are going on, virologists and scientists are still looking at genes on Earth that they think may be the only source of disease

 But they do not realize clouds of weapons are surrounding us from all sides, making frequent patrolling rounds, and watching us over the centuries.

 Dinosaurs, Human Civilization and Our Alien Guests:

 Personally I believe it was a comet or an asteroid chunk that came crashing down on Earth with a viral load that wiped out the entire population of dinosaurs 70 million years ago. Others may not agree. 

 Allow me to  theorize that it was an epidemic of diseases brought in by a comet that killed off these giant lizards, and not dust generated by the impact that generated an artificial ‘winter’ to cut off photosynthesis, causing the vegetation on which the dinosaurs fed to die as other scientists believe. We all have independent scientific thinking. I have my own independent life.

 Most of these extra-terrestrial missiles may be armed with a variety of biological warheads to sweep round and round our territorial (cosmic) space. It may have been a God-sent warning of gigantic magnitude for us fragile humans if we do not behave.

Once this huge comet’s  “space-ships” approaches their next ‘port of call’ (planet Earth) where the radiant light and heat of our life-giving Sun is, and in the neighbourhood of a ‘garden’ (the Earth), they will shed some of their passenger load of ‘biological weapons’, like seeds being thrown on  soft moist ground to germinate.

 After all, Earth has plenty of water, an ambient temperature, a friendly and conducive environment, and billions of generous hosts like you and me, our ducks, hens, and birds, and cattle all around to receive them. Such hospitality, why not? In astronomy we called this a habitable zone around our Sun or the Goldilocks Zone.

 Our Hospitable World:

 The heat and light from our friendly Sun will thaw this icy load of ‘foreign visitors’. These comets unpack and unload their ‘biological guests’ into our homes, and into our bodies. After all, with all these hospitable human hosts, plus our ducks, hens, and birds ‘they’ can live comfortably here for a few months before leaving us. Wouldn’t this biological hospitality we give them, exactly like turning on our home and car porch lights (the Sun) on to invite strange visitors in the night.  After all they came from such a long, long, dark, lonely and frigidly cold and lonely journey to visit us.  Wouldn’t we not welcome them in?  

 When they come a-calling, we would provide them with water, lodging, shelter and food (lodging, shelter and food being yours and my bodies). Our family members, the ducks and chicken all living together also share their hospitality, their shelter and their food (their blood and cells) with them.

 What’s more, these alien ‘guests’ are also free to move about from host to host. They are not very choosy, so long as someone can provide them with the appropriate food and warmth after arriving from a terribly long, cold, and hazardous journey. After all, they have been hibernating without food throughout that incredibly unforgiving journey. 

 Don’t we welcome them, and they take the pleasure of our hospitality? After they have fed on yours, mine, and our avian family kindness, and our ‘guests’ will go away, exactly like all those past epidemics of flu, and influenza did in the past with or without our vaccines.

 All or None Law: The Blind Sheep:

 SARS isolated ‘epidemic’ is absolutely nothing compared to the Spanish flu pandemic that wiped out 2,000,000 (2 million) people in 1918.

 Whatever the past history of influenza, they all went away only after we realized they were invaders. Our body sounds the alarm with high temperatures, generates all the appropriate classes and subclasses of antibodies, the various types of antibody-producing B-lymphocytes, perhaps even the T-lymphocytes (for rejection), monocytes (to ingest debris and foreign particles), and activated all other immunological defences against them.

 They come and go periodically depending on our immunological status against them, and the frequency, passage and visits of these ‘black biological clouds’. For thousands of millions of years these ‘biological container ships’ have been hurtling at 50-60 km per second above our heads - their earthy port of call.

 Once the spark of life is ignited or created, it could then be evolved through multiple transgenic mutations into many other life forms

 Would this be in-conformity with the Theory of Creation first, followed by the Theory of Evolution later?

 I believe the SARS issue has opened up an old wound once again for arguments among scientists about their origin. I have forwarded mine in this essay

 Like a flock of sheep that follows its leaders blindly to jump from the cliff top into the sea, I think the entire scientific community is also doing the same by following each other’s blind spot.

 Unfortunately, I was no different from a member of this community. If we merely look downwards, with myopic eyes and an introvert earth straddled mind, we would continue to blame the ducks, birds, poultry, and farm animals, our neighbors, the hospital patients and medical staff who did not don face masks 

Zoonotic Disease:

 We blame ourselves last. We will blame it as a zoonotic disease, because we refuse to look heaven-wards to accept that the elementary spark of life could have arrived like an Olympic Torch from a very distant world to start off this race of epidemics.

 I know most of my scientific-medical friends and colleagues still believe that it was the ducks and the cats, or the Southern Chinese (who ate everything) who started all this? Why blame all these emerging new infectious diseases on animals, or on specific ethnic groups? Was this new strain of coronavirus truly factory made in China, or was it unfortunately rained down on China by statistically random selection from another planet?

 After I wrote my first letter, I gave it a second thought, and realized how wrong I was like any other member of the scientific community. Suddenly, I found myself as blind as the rest of a flock of blind sheep. 

 We merely follow our leader, and each other to jump over the high cliff down into the sea below. The rest of the herd will follow the suicidal jump down into the deep blue sea. They merely looked down, never upwards. 

 In many ways I am very happy I took up astronomy to look at distant worlds as a hobby, and saw a great difference in the way I now think. 

 Else, we will only be peering downwards short-sighted through a microscope. We are afraid this is exactly what scientists and doctors are doing currently, running hither and thither trying to identify the SARS virus or other similar related viruses yet to come.

 Did we examine where it came from in the first place? We are just not brave enough to put our foot down to speak a mind of our own and say something different, lest we make a laughing-stock of ourselves among our learned and elite scientific and academic colleagues?

 Perhaps I may have made myself a black sheep among a flock of normal white sheep. I merely speak my own mind, because I believe this new virus was never a mutant form from those families of CoVs.

 I have a feeling that all previously unknown viruses also did not originate from this Earth. Why should they be when the supply from the dark Oort Cloud is almost enormously unlimited?

 Neither did they come from pigs, cats, goats and the cows. Neither did it sprout out from a Chinese body somewhere in China nor was it from the Chinese food they eat. These aliens may have come directly from outer space. I am not crazy to believe it this way. 

 

My Passion in Astronomy and Astrobiology:

 I think a lot of us out there know my passion for astronomy. This debate about diseases and life coming from the Comets is not new.

 The distinguished Cambridge Astronomer and Mathematician Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001), who later worked at the world-famous California Institute of Technology (CIT), together with the celebrated Professor Dr Chandra Wickramasinghe have published a long list of technical papers on their hypothesis and findings in prestigious scientific journals about the appearance of comets and plagues.

 The Black Death in the 1300s and several major pandemics of the Bubonic Plagues were linked to the appearances of great comets. Their studies have shown this. So were ancient Chinese records listing a chain of comets and plague incidences.

 Were these just coincidences?  Were Fred Holye, Chandra Wickramasinhe, and all the ancient civilizations over the centuries that connected the appearance of comets and diseases on Earth all coincidental or were they also black sheep among white-coat modern scientists and doctors? If they are, count me in as well.  I would rather be dubbed as one wearing a black coat with ancient wisdom, rather than one in white coat with modern arrogance.

 Hoyle and Chrandra have shown that many sudden pandemics and epidemics of new infectious diseases in the past were closely correlated to the passage of comets. They came out with this proposition called ‘The Panspermia Theory’

 Their publications are far too long for me to list here. In any case, this and all articles posted in this blog are just light non-technical essays meant for general lay readers that would not require references unlike research papers.

Later their theories were joined by other scientific minds and researchers who thought the same, as the evidence kept rolling in. They are so compelling to believe. One of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe papers was “Does Epidemic Disease Come from Space” which was published in “New Scientist, 76:402, 1977”. Among one of Hoyle’s best works was “The Black Cloud” It speaks about an intelligent and a very much alive cloud which was approaching the Solar System.

 Professor Chris Kinsley of Cambridge calculated its proximity between the Sun and Earth which would lead to global disaster….and so the story went (it was only a story then).

 Hoyle did show the epidemiology  of influenza increased with altitude and was linked with the presence of a comet in the region of earth a few months earlier. He demonstrated this correlation many times over, but the medical community chose to ignore his findings, and blamed it on something else earth-bound.

 Yet these medical researchers could not show an iota of evidence where all those seasonal influenza bugs came from, or what triggered them. They all keep saying it’s ‘mutation, its mutation. I am just presenting scientific truth to you. In Science, if the result is zero, we will ethically say it is zero, and if it is positive and quantifiable, we will show the exact data to the entire world through our technical publications. We don’t claim what is not there.

Scientific and medical training, their education and discipline are very strict and regimented. Academic honesty, ethics, and professionalism are their hallmark, and are used as ethical guidelines. The scientist / doctor moral code is like that. If there are strong reasons for us to argue logically based on previous observations and findings, or even based on a logical hypothesis, we will stand up to provide all the background evidence. There is nothing to hide, or twist around.

 Recent Visits:

 It is just not possible for me to discuss this complex and lengthy subject here any further. It will cover another 50-60 more pages. And what about all the recent comets that came in the early part of 2003? I have a long list of them, but it is just possible to me to write and name them – Wirtanen, Swift-Neat, Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Wild 2, Shoemaker-Levy, Shoemaker 3, Neat-Linear and so on.

 Those comets originating from the titanic dark organic Clouds out there in interstellar space could harbor life-giving compounds.  

 Their debris peppers the Earth whenever they vaporized in the vicinity of the Sun.

 These compounds in the presence of heat, light and energy from the Sun could trigger off synthesis (reassemble) from component parts into neurotropic viruses, and infectious prion particles. Prion particles are atypical viruses, proteinaceous in nature that could explain the emergence of strange diseases like Kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy and fatal familial insomnia, as examples among many others.

 Now this thing called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, our current visitor, is your and my guest too? I believe shall be more SARS-related pandemic yet to come. 

 

We have lots  of other ideas and hypotheses which we could type and type through the pages …all night through - one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock… all night long round the clock till drawn breaks till the next few days. 

 

My Former Thought Cast into Eternal Jail:

 

That old belief of mine by following others blindly - that SARS was a zoonotic disease originating from animals living together with the Chinese in crowded flats in Southern China, and Hong Kong, along with the even more bizarre Canadian theory that SARS is caused by the Chinese eating their own pets as part of their family food should be cast into eternal jail.  

 My theory is that we should be locked up in the East Wing, and the Canadians in the West Wing, so that we don’t see each other's faces anymore - forever. Other scientific minds are free to have their own theories.

 After all, mutations is their business, but  none of mine. But none has told me where the first virus came from to start off this mutagenic chain?

  (This is an 9,217-word essay was written for general lay readers way into the night till dawn)

 lim ju boo