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About viruses and viral disease

Are Viruses Living?

9 June 2004

Let’s first define life. According to the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary, life is “an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.”

Viruses are not living things. Viruses are complicated assemblies of molecules, including proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and carbohydrates, but on their own they can do nothing until they enter a living cell. Without cells, viruses would not be able to multiply. Therefore, viruses are not living things.

When a virus encounters a cell, a series of chemical reactions occur that lead to the production of new viruses. These steps are completely passive, that is, they are predefined by the nature of the molecules that comprise the virus particle. Viruses don’t actually ‘do’ anything. Often scientists and non-scientists alike ascribe actions to viruses such as employing, displaying, destroying, evading, exploiting, and so on. These terms are incorrect because viruses are passive, completely at the mercy of their environment.

Update: See a more recent post for my thoughts on this question.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. trollololol says

    2 August 2014 at 11:51 pm

    guess what i’m 12

  2. Firas Al-Ballouz says

    22 September 2014 at 10:35 am

    Homework completed,thanks.

  3. Khan Baba says

    12 October 2014 at 2:40 pm

    Hey, ur saying that acording to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, But here Merriam-Webster Dictionary, also define virus is Living thing./……………………….
    First Reserch plz

  4. me! :-) says

    28 October 2014 at 6:31 pm

    This article helped me find one piece of evidence for my essay. I think this is how much ebery one should write. Not boring.

  5. me! :-) says

    28 October 2014 at 6:38 pm

    I meant every, not ebery.

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    29 October 2014 at 9:40 am

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    29 October 2014 at 9:41 am

    what’s the answer to #24

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    29 October 2014 at 9:42 am

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    29 October 2014 at 9:45 am

    do you like gerome

  16. YOLO MAN says

    3 November 2014 at 2:19 pm

    no he is dumb

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    3 November 2014 at 2:21 pm

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    3 November 2014 at 2:22 pm

    it

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    3 November 2014 at 2:22 pm

    is

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    3 November 2014 at 2:22 pm

    wierd

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    3 November 2014 at 2:24 pm

    what up my bras

  22. DestinyAndrews says

    11 November 2014 at 9:40 pm

    explain how a virus is a living thing???

  23. jmstarr says

    22 November 2014 at 5:23 pm

    is this accurate?

  24. Angus Landeryou says

    1 December 2014 at 5:24 am

    I thinj viruses arent alive or dead. They are simoly biological machines, dependant in a “user” (cells) to do anything in life.
    .that said they are the most useless things I could think of. Even Jellyfish contribute to the world in their own weird jelly-ish way

  25. DIPRT says

    1 December 2014 at 5:17 pm

    Good

  26. DC Welker says

    13 December 2014 at 4:45 am

    Now you are getting to the root. Think about this as well, if viruses were never alive to begin with, why do we get vaccines. The medical field teaches us the vaccines are made from dead or weak (but alive) viruses. Do you smell some bullcrap in there yet?

  27. Jack Black says

    8 January 2015 at 5:13 pm

    So, you’re saying that viruses utilize their own metabolism to evade counteractions actively, right?

  28. Tinytina says

    22 January 2015 at 7:20 pm

    Not a doctor or student, but have a questioning mind. Suppose on a new planet we encountered a cellular form like a virus, should it be killed or should it be considered a life form for that planet. To me a virus is alive, it moves from cell to cell, it reproduces and changes to protect itself. The stimuli is whatever we use to try to kill it, the virus changes so that the agent doesn’t work any longer or it kills the host.

  29. Tinytina says

    23 January 2015 at 8:19 am

    http://news.discovery.com/human/health/viruses-with-immune-systems-130227.htm…since I made statements that I thought viruses are living, decided to do some research. This article shows that scientist agree with my theory.

  30. poo brains says

    11 February 2015 at 7:33 pm

    poo

  31. poo brains says

    11 February 2015 at 7:34 pm

    lololololololololololololololololololololol poo

  32. RjoyD says

    11 February 2015 at 8:00 pm

    This is very interesting, as well as helpful… Thank You 🙂

  33. Isaac Toth says

    14 February 2015 at 4:01 pm

    Just like they need DNA to replicate, so do we.

    We make more cells by copying DNA
    We make babies with gametes, gametes are cells

  34. Michael Kleider says

    24 February 2015 at 8:40 pm

    We are all passive if you want to define passive as “at the mercy of the environment”. This is not so much a critique of your answer which is consistent with popular orthodoxy in biology. It’s a critique of the biological paradigm that sees organism as distinct from environment. No organism would be functional without it’s environment. I believe that in order to make a false distinction between “organism” and “environment”, biologists had to gerimander the definition of organism in arbitrary ways. I think the example of a virus not counting as an organism–something that so obviously is a living thing–cries out for this pole rigging to be noticed. Those who think that there is a hard distinction between life and non life that can be summarized by 7 transcendental characteristics want to believe in hard categorize so badly that they have become very gullible.

  35. Taco Bell says

    26 February 2015 at 10:10 am

    Lmao dead.

  36. MoHo says

    3 March 2015 at 8:17 am

    cool

  37. syakila sahal says

    16 March 2015 at 3:28 am

    so is it we can classified virus as particles?

  38. Gage says

    7 April 2015 at 2:46 pm

    This may be so, that they’re not considered life because they don’t meet all 7 characteristics, but the ones that are present in my opinion carry more weight. Like the simple fact that viruses adapt and experience evolution in a way to try and stay fit and “ahead of the curve”, that’s what trees and humans do. and bacteria and protists which are life. So why aren’t they considered similar to those? Rocks are non-living, but they also don’t adapt in any way to increase their existence on this planet. I just don’t agree that viruses aren’t living.

  39. Chris Thompson says

    24 April 2015 at 8:42 pm

    Hey Cody and All,

    I stumbled upon this site by accident. I am not a “Virus Researcher” or a Scientist, but I am kinda tired and decided to read this article.

    ‘First off, I can’t believe how lucky Ashleyirons’ boyfriend is.

    Second, Cody, was a very interesting quote you stated in your comment;

    “A non-living thing is one that lacks or has stopped displaying the characteristics of life. Thus, they lack or no longer displaying the capability for growth, reproduction, respiration, metabolism, and movement. They also are not capable of responding to stimuli or evolve and adapt to their environment.They also do not require energy to continue existing. Examples of non-living things are rock, water, and sun.”

    Then I began thinking…”Wow……………………………..What a trip!” (light bulb over my head)

    I’ll make this long story short:

    This may sound “out there”, or you all may have heard/thought of it before… here goes…

    OK, Cody, in reference to the portion of your comment, “A non-living thing is one that lacks or has STOPPED DISPLAYING (my emphasis) displaying the characteristics of life.”

    Ok, everybody, don’t laugh. Here comes…Now, could the virus’ that we know of have “evolved” or “mutated” waaaay past us humans to the point where they DON’T NEED to carry around their happy environment and the nagging spouse and crying kids and hunt for food all day long? They (virus’) don’t play mind games or stand you up on dates. I don’t think they worry about it. I don’t think they worry at all. They just are, I guess.

    Doesn’t sound like a bad “non-life” to me.

    Anyway, yeah, I was tripping on “What ‘life’ must be like as a virus.

    This stuff is interesting! Thanks a lot.

  40. stlill says

    3 May 2015 at 12:39 pm

    Pls can u help me answer this question.A virus can be regarded as a living organism because it.A.causes disease in plants and animals B.exist in variety of shapes C.reproduces In living cells D.is microscopic

  41. A Joe says

    16 June 2015 at 7:46 am

    As far as I know, a few evidences were found that Mitochondria were at one point in the past a fully living prokaryotic organism, so yea. Maybe viruses have that kind of a probability.

  42. wassuppppp says

    26 June 2015 at 4:53 am

    hi

  43. Aj xiang says

    11 August 2015 at 3:43 am

    cool… than I’m gonna win my debate… thanx =)

  44. saif says

    12 September 2015 at 1:55 pm

    thanks alot ! i jut finished My HomeWork
    + Thanks For The Info I Hope Its Useful

  45. Timgor says

    13 September 2015 at 1:31 pm

    So shouldn’t antivirals just make your body stop reacting to viruses and allow it to passively coexist, instead of just trying to combat it? Viruses themselves are completely harmless.

  46. aaa says

    20 September 2015 at 4:21 am

    so this is the reason why viruses are not classified and also why their diagrams look like some kind of machines

  47. cbusenke says

    6 November 2015 at 3:52 pm

    The debate on whether or not they’re alive or partially alive or dead but using the force is really one for scholarly purposes only. They’re grown, they mutate, they have an evolutionary history or evolution that has been studied and documented. They require H20 to do the same things that all living organisms do. Without other forms of life they could not exist and that is one very important cardinal rule about life, it cannot exist alone. Virus, passed through the same genetic evolutionary steps that we did to get here and each has evolved to fit in a particular environmental niche/function/time. We’re both testimonials to the incredible diversity this planet offers. Viral DNA streamlined for survival. Our DNA, if you remember Gary Larson and his petrie dish cartoons, seems to still be searching for its limitations
    .

  48. Maria says

    6 November 2015 at 7:07 pm

    This is very helpful. Helped me witj my homework

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