Scientist sinks SARS space theory

SUGGESTIONS that SARS came from outer space were unbelievably implausible, one of the world’s leading authorities on the virus said today.

MELBOURNE SUGGESTIONS that SARS came from outer space were unbelievably implausible, one of the world’s leading authorities on the virus said today.A letter published in The Lancet medical journal earlier this year captured the public imagination by suggesting that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) may have hitch-hiked a ride to earth on a comet or meteor.But Edison Liu, executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore and a speaker at the International Genetics Conference in Melbourne, debunked the theory as “scientific imagination bordering on fantasy.”SARS was clearly a terrestrial, or earth-based virus, he said, although genetic analysis showed it did not resemble any human strains.Dr Liu said containment, quarantine and the internet helped conquer SARS, which otherwise would have turned into a disaster of almost unprecedented scale.”Using the internet and modern communications as the grease to accelerate discussions (between the scientific community) was exactly the reason why we contained it,” he said.”There’s no question in anybody’s mind that this would have been a major epidemic of disastrous proportions.”However, he said much about SARS remained a mystery, including its origins.The current belief was that SARS had species-jumped from an animal to humans.Dr Liu said the virus was capable of infecting multiple species including some monkeys and possibly also the common cat.Mice and rats had shown to be relatively resistant to SARS.”How it actually got started and which animal source it came from is still unclear,” he said.There was a major concern that SARS could make a comeback, Dr Liu said. (Source: The West Australian, 9 July 2003)