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From: XRJDM@SCFVM.BITNET (Joe McMahon)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Organic vs. Inorganic Viruses
Message-ID: <0002.9008241902.AA22297@ubu.cert.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 23 Aug 90 14:03:18 GMT
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I see two problems with the comparison of the polio vaccine to
hunter/killer viruses.

1) Human beings, despite genetic variations, still run pretty much
   the same "operating system". Even in cases where the polio vaccine
   becomes virulent, the body has built-in anti-viral defenses. This
   is not the case for computers. Computer "biology" (in terms of
   operating systems) is evolving at a rate many orders of magnitude
   faster than is human biology. Sooner or later, a computer virus
   will hit a situation with which it will be unable to cope.
2) It is not currently possible for anyone with the motivation to do
   so to reassemble an existing biological virus into a different
   virus without a lot of expensive equipment and a far greater
   amount of technical expertise than is available to most people.
   The virus "writer" often only needs a byte-level editor and very
   little expertise to turn out a variation on an existing virus. This
   could as easily be a bad as a good variation.

 --- Joe M.