The Importance of Ebola

[Patrick O'Neil]

On Sun, 14 May 1995, The LightKeeper wrote:

> Patrick O'Neil <patrick at corona> muttered:
> 
> >Not from a purely objective standpoint.  It is not considered odd, crazy, 
> >or sick, by many people (they ARE wrong, however) to "cull" the 
> >population of dear for the sake of their own survival.  This is actually 
> >a euphamism for "I wanna go shoot me some deer and hang a dead animal on 
> >my wall."  
> <SNIP>
> >Patrick
> 
> Yeah, so it is much more humane to let deer die slowly from

Actually this was somewhat of a setup and it does get off-topic so I will 
keep it very brief.  The point I would make in regards that my statement 
above is that use of hunting to cull herds would not be necessary at all 
for deer population health if their natural predators were reintroduced.  
Such a system is self regulating and doesn't require the use of drunken, 
pasty-skinned, cigarette smoking, hillbilly yahoos to blow away deer or 
elk.   

Mountain lions, bobcats, wolves, and coyotes are enough in themselves to 
produce TRULY healthy herds since hunters go for the nicest, healthiest 
specimens while the natural predators go for the feeble, old, sick, and 
weak.  Opposite targets, opposite results.

Now back to on-topic discussion...

In regards to clay being a substrate for Ebola virus (another thread), 
the problem is not just one of preserving the negative strand RNA.  A 
nucleic acid all by itself is not infectious and is quite fragile.  
Even if plus strand RNA was locked up to clay, it would not lead to 
anything but degredation with even a finger touch (your skin is coated 
with DNAse and RNAse that make short work of free nucleic acid 
polymers). 

Patrick