Page 33 - The Miracle of the Immune System

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Besieged Castle: The Human Body

Ebola virus (top left) Influenza
virus (bottom left) Common cold
virus (bottom right)

The virus confuses the cell with the tactics it employs and avoids ob-
servation.
This is how the events develop: the cell transports the new DNA of
the virus into its nucleus. Thinking that it produces protein, the cell starts
to replicate this new DNA. The DNA of the virus hides itself so furtively
that the cell involuntarily becomes the production factory of its own ene-
my and produces the very viruses that will eventually destroy it. It is in-

deed very difficult for the cell to identify the hereditary make-up of the vi-
rus as that of an invader.
The virus locates itself within the cell so well that it almost becomes
a part of it. After the multiplication process is over, the virus and other
new viruses depart from the cell to repeat the same process in other cells.
During the process, depending on the type of the virus and the cell, the
virus can kill the host cell, cause harm to it, modify it, or simply do noth-
ing.

The question of how the cell, which operates under a very strictly
monitored control mechanism, can be deceived into becoming a virus fac-
tory is still unanswered. It is quite intriguing that viruses, which have a