Busting viral ghosts

Sigourney Weaver and the Killer Drugs, part two: Antivirals

This is part two in Sigourney Weaver and the Killer Drugs series, where we use her movies to understand how antibiotics, antivirals, and cytotoxic drugs work. You can read the introductory post here and find the antibiotic post here.

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Last week while I was making my way home from work, I intersected the path of a man on a mission. Armed with a sign and an apparently healthy set of lungs¹, he was charging along the street singing “Old Macdonald had a farm” as loud as can be.

The sign read: “VIRUSES ARE NOT REAL”.

I’m not usually one to be absolute about things, but in this case I make an exception.

Sorry buddy, you’re wrong.²

Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Kind of like…ghosts?

Not a great photo, but I didn’t want to get too close and end up in an actual conversation with this guy.

Before we get into it, I feel the need to state that don’t really think ghosts exist. But for the purposes of this post, at least for the start of it, let’s just pretend they do. Just for a moment, suspend your disbelief…please.³

My knowledge of ghosts comes almost entirely from pop culture. Predominantly, the Ghostbusters franchise. Make of that what you will. If you need to familiarise yourself with this movie, take a moment to read the introductory post for a recap of the OG (and the best), Ghostbusters⁴.

Ghostly features

There are a few important things we can learn about ghosts from watching Ghostbusters. For those of you who are particular about this sort of stuff (I really doubt that’s anyone reading these posts) please know that I’m playing fast and loose with what I’m considering to be a ‘ghost’ - basically anything within the spirit realm is going to get lumped into this category. There’s a lot of artistic license happening this week.

The first thing to know about ghosts is that they come in a variety of forms. Sure, some of them look like old timey humans, but not all of them do. Zuul, Vinz, and Gozer are some sort of shapeshifting spirits that possess people. Slimer is a weird blobby thing with a creepy set of human teeth. And of course, we can’t forget the giant marshmallow man and the cute little marshmallows in the new movies. Presumably, each of these varieties of ghost has certain defining characteristics in addition to the notable differences in their physical appearances.

Another thing we learn from Ghostbusters is that ghosts aren’t alive. Duh. But…they’re not entirely dead either.

I suppose this requires us to think for a moment about what it means for something to be alive. In a biological sense, not a philosophical one.

I’ll leave the full definition to the biologists, but a couple of features that see the ghosts falling short of being considered a form of life are that they’re unable to convert food to energy, and they can’t reproduce on their own. Ergo, not considered a living organism.

Slimer might be able to eat, but he can’t metaboliise and make energy.

However, that doesn’t mean ghosts are dead. I mean, dead things can’t exactly leave a trail of destruction all over New York City like you see in Ghostbusters. And ghosts might not be able to reproduce by themselves, but they sure made Dana do some weird shit when she was possessed by Zuul. And slimer, well he leaves a trail of slime over everything he interacts with.

So we’ve got a variety of ghosts that are not quite alive, and not quite dead.

Another thing Ghostbusters teaches us that controlling the destruction caused by ghosts can get tricky, because ghosts aren’t always visible or easy to catch. Timing is critical when it comes to busting ghosts.

The aim of the ghostbusting game is to try and control the damage, not fully eradicate them. When the ghostbusters crew pull out their proton accelerator packs and point those beams at the spirits, they don’t actually kill them, they wrangle them into their trap. Thus creating an ideal premise for a movie franchise - Gozer is the gift that keeps on giving.

The ghostly features of viruses

As it turns out, viruses share a lot of the same features as ghosts. Except, of course, viruses are real!

But we’re pretending ghosts are real to help us understand, so let’s continue.

Sounds ridiculous, I know. Let’s recap.

Firstly, just like there are different types of ghosts, so too are there a variety of viruses. Different shapes, genomes, proteins, size, and methods of reproduction.

Viruses can be categorised in various ways, but going into the detail isn’t going to add much to the discussion. But give yourself a few minutes and I’m sure you can come up with many different examples, like influenza, coronavirus herpes, rotavirus, retrovirus, to name but a few commonly known groups.

From a general structure point of view, viruses differ from the human and bacterial cells we talked about last week. For a start, they’re a lot smaller, meaning they’re harder to see under a microscope. But just like ghosts, not being able to see them doesn’t mean they’re not there!

Viruses are so small because they’re essentially a bit of genetic material (either RNA or DNA) surrounded by a protective protein coating⁵. Some of them have an additional coating called an envelope, while others without the envelope and are known as naked viruses. That’s not really important to understand at this point, just thought it was a fun thing to mention.

Secondly, just like ghosts, viruses are not considered living organisms, but nor are they quite dead.

Because of their simple structure, viruses don’t contain all the parts to produce energy and reproduce on their own. Rather, their mission is to get the viral genetic material into another living cell and take advantage of that cell’s reproductive mechanisms. While the way they get this genetic material into the host cell varies, the viral end game remains consistent.

In order to have your cells possessed by the viral genetic material, the virus must first enter the body. Just like the bacteria we talked about last week, viruses typically enter the body through the body’s ‘openings’ - think breaks in the skin and the good old mucous membranes.

As we talked about in that post, the mucous membranes are built for taking on wannabe invaders and work hard to keep the little bastards contained. One thing we didn’t mention last week though, is how insect and animal bites can also introduce bacterial and viral infections. They break the skin, introducing invaders into the local tissues and potentially getting them into the bloodstream where they can travel throughout the body.

Once the virus has breached the body’s barriers and got its viral genetic material into your human cells, the body’s natural processes kind of take care of the viruses reproduction. We’re going to take a bit of a closer look at how human cells divide to reproduce next week, but for now it’s enough to know that if the cell that’s dividing contains viral genetic material, so will all its progeny. We’ll come back to this in a moment.

So these viruses, like ghosts, aren’t really considered living organisms because they don’t reproduce on their own. But as we know from the ghosts though, just because something isn’t alive doesn’t mean it can’t leave a trail of destruction in its path.

I’m sure you know, viruses sure can put your body in a state of disrepair, to say the least. The resultant symptoms are a sign that the virus has gotten its genetic material into your cells, and your body doesn’t like it very much. In other words, if your feeling the effects of the virus in your body you’ve already been possessed.

Antivirals minimise damage and bolster defence

So these ghostly viruses have made their way into your body, infiltrated your cells like Zuul possessing Dana, and are causing destruction like Slimer leaving green goo everywhere he goes. How do you get rid of it and get healthy again?

The unfortunate news is, that once a virus has taken hold, you are very much reliant on the capacity of your body’s natural defences- the immune system. Unlike bacteria where drugs can differentiate between the harmful bacterial cells and the healthy human ones, the virus’ genetic material is literally within the human cells. This makes viruses tricky to target with drugs.

Generally speaking, antiviral medicines work by interfering with how viruses get their genetic material into the host cells and multiplying. Basically, the role of antiviral medicines is to try and buy your body enough time and space to allow your immune system to clear the infected cells out.

The ability of the antiviral drug to do its job is specific to the type of virus that’s causing the infection. Not all antivirals work for all viruses. In some cases, there’s no choice but to let your body do its thing and try and manage the symptoms as best you can.

Astute readers will realise by now that the title of this series is a bit misleading when it comes to antivirals. You see, they’re not actually killer drugs at all. I mean, how can you kill something that isn’t really alive in the first place? Like the proton accelerators packs, antiviral medicines are all about helping to get things under control, not exterminate or eliminate.

Antivirals are about controlling spread and minimising damage.

This is why timing is everything when it comes to antivirals. Get in early with the right drug for the right virus and you might be able to minimise the damage and give your body a chance to get on top of it. Leave it too late, and the path of destruction has already been initiated. Imagine the human cell levitating and saying in a demonic voice 'there is no cell, only virus’. Sorry, I just wanted to get another Ghostbusters reference in.

To close, let’s take things back to where we started, with old mate walking the (not so mean) streets of Adelaide singing Old Macdonald with his ‘VIRUSES ARE NOT REAL’ sign.

Let me be explicit: VIRUSES ARE REAL. Ghosts are not.

The best defence we have against viruses is avoiding getting infected with them in the first place by implementing public health measures including control of spread and effective use of vaccinations. Otherwise, we’re merely trying to minimise the damage and give our body a fighting chance to mount an immune response, with or without the help of antiviral medicines.

Fixed it.

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Thanks so much for reading Lessons on Drugs! Next week we’re going to look at cytotoxic medicines. These are proper killer drugs. I might look at antifungals and parasites in coming weeks too…why not?

If you enjoyed reading this, please do me a favour and hit the like button. It helps people find it and gives me some encouragement, which comes in handy some days. Sharing this post with others is also very helpful.

1. Maybe this is why he was carrying the sign and believes this garbage - he might be one of those people who isn’t prone to respiratory tract infections.

2. Edited to add that Lessons on Drugs is based on the premise that well established scientific evidence is accepted as fact. This post is solely concerned with helping people understand the role of antiviral drugs in controlling human viruses. I feel no need to ‘prove’ that viruses are real, because there’s a whole heap of sound scientific evidence that has already done this. The man with the sign is free to go on his merry way and believe whatever he wants to as far as I’m concerned, I just think he’s incorrect. But if I get to talk to him, I’ll be friendly and treat him with respect, the same way I do anyone else.

3. Edited to add that I’ve since realised quite a few people do actually believe in ghosts. Unlike the ‘viruses aren’t real’ thing, I’m not entirely closed off to the idea that ghost and spirits exist. However, I’ve never had any life experiences that suggest they are real and I’m quite sure the scientific proof isn’t there yet, so I’m sticking with ‘not real’ for now.

4. I think the last two are also pretty good. The female cast one, not so much. I know that sounds awfully un-feminist of me, but it’s just not that great.

5. If you want to learn more about viruses, and how they made us human, check out this post from Gunnar that’s equal parts fascinating and terrifying

How Viruses Made Us Human