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are not truly alive. Instead you walk the shadow-world between
life and non-life.
You are feared by all, Revered by none.
You infect all vertebrates and many invertebrates.
You are one of the driving forces in evolution. Your genes have
been incorporated into our genes.
You are a wonder of engineering and adaptability.
You are ruthless in your primal drive to survive.
You are the life-long uninvited guest in my body.
You are a red-hot wonder when active. Yet will lie dormant for
decades like a seed in the dessert waiting for an opportune
moment.
You are the Herpes Simplex Virus.
MEMO TO THE HERPERS VIRUS: You need to hire a PR firm.
Although one of the least damaging viruses, milder even than its
relatives the chicken-pox/shingles virus and the mono/chronic
fatigue virus- Herpes is feared, scorned, reviled like almost no
other disease in modern times. It's a simple
sexually-transmitted skin infection classified as a minor
disease in dermatological textbooks. But it's sexually
transmitted and of course anything related to sex in this
sexually conflicted society comes under the prevue of religious
conservatives and those with unresolved sexual hang-ups.
Herpes isn't one of the bad viruses that will kill it's host. It
is a virus that merely wishes to take up permanent residence in
a host and remain dormant for long periods of time. Some studies
Love In A Time Of HerpesI was born in 1965- a year often considered the first year of
generation-x . The previous generation- the baby-boomers like
my parents, grew up in a time of free love. My mother didn t
take advantage of this but my father sure did, but that s
another story.
Us gen-x ers were the first generation to have to deal with AIDS
and the fallout from it. Instead of the sexual revolution we had
fear and loathing in our own pants.
Now as a Holistic Herpes Treatment Specialist I treat a lot of
teenagers and people in the early twenties who are exploring
their sexuality in a time were we ar ..
suggest that up to 70% of those infected by herpes simplex do
not have outbreaks that they can detect.
Herpes is a wonder of engineering. The debate in the scientific
community about whether or not viruses are actually alive
continues. Viruses lack the ability to survive and reproduce on
their own. They are entirely dependant on having a host. The
herpes virus is actually very similar to a computer virus in the
way it behaves. Like a computer virus, herpes simplex penetrates
into your hardware/body, re-programmes your operating system/dna
to change the way your computer/body behaves and make billions
of copies of itself. Viruses come close to fitting the
definition of being alive but they stay on the boundary between
life and ab-life. Viruses can grow in dead human cells and even
have the ability to bring them back to life. Viruses can even
stage their own resurrection. Even if you manage to destroy
massive amount of a virus in your body, if there was more than
one copy of the virus in any one cell, the virus can resurrect
itself by playing Dr. Frankenstein, piecing together parts from
more than one dead virus to create a new living whole virus.
The herpes virus like no other virus I know of has the ability
to compel the host cell its has invaded to change it's shape and
turn itself into a tunnel to the next healthy cell so that
herpes can move from cell to cell without exposing itself to
your blood stream. This way your immune system has no chance of
detecting and destroying it.
Just as impressive is the strategy the virus employs of only
sending 50% of active virus during an outbreak to the surface of
the skin. The other 50% of the activated virus it sends to
infect uninfected cells. Thus it is never in danger of being
wiped out of your body.
Viruses have been one of the key players in the evolution of
humans and other animal life. When a virus has infected us in
The Ethics Of A Life-Long Herpes InfectionThe Ethics of a Life-long Herpes Infection
From day one my own personal life-long herpes infection has
presented me with several ethical challenges. It has challenged
me on the question of who to tell and when. It has challenged me
on the issue of what to say and how to others with herpes. It
has challenged me on the question of Do I have any
responsibilities towards trying to prevent the people in the
community who do not herpes from getting it, and if so what are
they ?
On how to tell and when:
When I was diagnosed with herpes the doctors told me that it was
safe to have se ..
the past if it has any genes which are useful to our evolution
those genes have been incorporated into our genome. When that
same virus mutates, again if there are any useful new genes our
bodies have in our evolutionary past incorporated those new
genes into our dna. Since viruses mutate faster than we can they
have had a profound influence on how we have evolved, as have
bacteria. It can be argued that viruses have probably had more
of an effect on our evolution than climate change or other
changes in our environment since those changes will always
happen much more slowly than the mutation of viruses and
bacteria.
The word herpes comes from the Greek "to creep". Herpes was
certainly an issue even to the ancient Greeks. Herpes can indeed
creep from cell to cell undetected by the immune system. Herpes
can creep from one outbreak location to others. Herpes does
indeed creep from an infected person to an uninfected person.
Herpes has been around for 140 million years and will be around
long after we're gone from this planet. We still don't know a
great deal about the herpes simplex virus. I have no doubt that
as we get to know this virus better and better it will become
harder not to acknowledge it an engineering marvel, a great
survivor and evolutionary instigator.
About the author:
Christopher Scipio, is one of the most experienced holistic
practitioners treating the Herpes virus. A homeopath and
herbalist who hails from a long line of Caribbean natural
healers, Scipio has during the last 15 years developed a very
successful natural protocol in treating the Herpes family of
viruses. http://www.natropractica.com
Christopher Ricardo ScipioThe Incredible, Mystical, Formidable Herpes Virus
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