Sars Virus 'came From Outer Space'

It is not surprising that the World Health Organisation has had trouble fighting the Sars virus. According to one academic, it has probably came from out of this world.

Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology - a body founded by Cardiff University and the University of Wales College of Medicine - has long held that many plagues have an extraterrestrial origin.

He believes that huge amounts of micro-organisms land on Earth every day, including a tonne of bacteria. Given this, the chances would be that many surprise outbreaks of disease came from space.

He and his colleagues argue, in a research letter to the Lancet medical journal, that a strong case can be made for Sars being one of many illnesses from space, from the plague of Athens in the fifth century BC to the influenza pandemic of 1917-19.

Sars has killed more than 660 people and infected well over 7,000 during the past six months.

"The virus is unexpectedly novel and appeared without warning in mainland China," Prof Wickramasinghe writes.

"A small amount of the culprit virus introduced into the stratosphere could make a tentative fallout east of the great mountain range of the Himalayas, where the stratosphere is thinnest, followed by sporadic deposits in neighbouring areas.

"If the virus is only minimally infective, as it seems to be, the subsequent course of its global progress will depend on stratospheric transport and mixing, leading to a fallout continuing seasonally over a few years."

The WHO and other health bodies believe Sars is a coronavirus, related to a family of viruses that often cause colds.

Many scientists are working to confirm the theory that Sars simply mutated from another virus here on Earth. However, a supposition that it might have come from animals has been undermined by a failure to make it take hold in pigs and chickens. Tests are now taking place involving other species.