If our Cells were like humans We’d All be Dead

 

I watched an interesting episode about Cells inside the human body called Curiosity: Battlefield Cell. It shows - in vivid detail - what happens when a virus enters your body and the process it goes through and how it attacks and infects cells.

The particular virus they showed was one that causes things like congestion in the nose and cold or flu. This virus goes through a very arduous process and it has one objective – to find a cell, clone an army and destroy it. The body has its defenses against viruses and bacteria and it actually goes into battles almost daily to keep viruses away from your cells.

I never knew just how complicated the body is, even before the virus gets to any cells there are many defenses within the body that detect and destroy these viruses. In turn the virus has many defenses and tactics to get past these defenses. When a virus eventually does get into a Cell it makes its way into the center where the virus DNA will kind of “overwrite” and replace the cell DNA with its own DNA. Then the virus will start cloning itself rapidly and create new viruses, thousands within this particular cell. Then it destroys the cell and these thousands of viruses will start the whole infection process with other cells in the body.

While this is all happening – when a cell gets infected and is about to get overrun and killed by the virus it will send out a warning to the other cells nearby and to the body. The white blood cells will come to the cell and start fighting the virus clones by consuming the virus clones. If the cell is beyond repairing the white blood cells will destroy the infected cell. Even nearby healthy cells that are close to the infected cells will actually destroy themselves to stop the spread.

This is simply amazing – all of this happening in the body and all we experience is a runny nose. The body does all it can to protect. All the cells within the body are all working together with the basic understanding that if one cell does not do its part, then it compromises all the other cells and the body as a whole. So a Cell will destroy itself to protect the body as a whole. It will do what is best for all.

Now imagine that these Cells were like humans. Acting in pure self-interest for example one day simply too lazy to fight a virus, or choosing to preserve itself instead of destroying itself to stop a spread of infection. We would be royally screwed. What if your heart decided it will only beat if you give it something in return? Or it is just not in the mood to beat? You will die.

We all need to be more like these Cells. This earth is one big organism and we humans are the cells. As you can see with the state of this organism we are slowly killing it with our greed and self-interest. We should look within ourselves at the effeteness of working together. Currently we are more like the virus, but we must learn to change and be more like OurCELLves.