Are Viruses Alive

Are viruses alive or not? This is a very tricky concept. So far what I’ve learned from past classes and from this one. Is that virus are considered not living. However they do act almost like a living organism and for the longest time they were considered living microscopic life forms that causes disease and death. It wasn’t until 1935, when Wendell M. Stanley and his colleagues, at what is now the Rockefeller University in New York City, crystallized a virus— tobacco mosaic virus—for the first time. They saw that it consisted of a package of complex biochemical. But it lacked essential systems necessary for metabolic functions, the biochemical activity of life. (1)
So after reading a few articles online about whether viruses are alive or not. I realized the real question to the answer was. What is considered alive? …show more content…
It was actually one of the few that I found that argued that viruses are alive, but once again their reasoning also came down to the definition of what life is. It also argued that virus just have a different mode of living instead of the traditional criteria for life. They also stated that virus are the oldest “organism” that predates even the oldest bacteria and other microorganism. Though the article did bring up a very good side note. In today’s culture when one is sick, we seek medicine to “kill it”. So the obvious question is how to do you kill something that is technically not alive? In my opinion, I believe viruses are not alive, but are more like seeds or a magnet. A magnet isn’t considered living or anything but when it is around certain metals is attracting the metals to it. Just like a virus. It isn’t active or anything until it enters a host and becomes active and starts to replicate. I just think has to meet the criteria of what is “living”. Though I think this right now…. I’m starting to lean to the other side of the argument with more information and research that is going on