26/03/2022
“To consider viruses as the cause of disease is an oversimplification. As immunologist Herbert Virgin and colleagues point out, there is always a reciprocal relation between virus and host… Viral disease is a mutual interaction between the host organism and the virus. It would be much more fruitful to speak of the virus as a necessary condition for certain diseases, just as a predisposition in the host organism is a necessary condition. The use of the term “cause” in medicine, and in biology more generally, is misleading and would best be avoided altogether. It suggests that the one specific entity is making something happen - “this causes that.” But in life, what people call the cause is always embedded in a context, and in interplay with this context the effect arises. In life there are only reciprocal relations.”
Craig Holdrege, Viruses in the Dynamics of Life, The Nature Institute, 2020. www.natureinstitute.org
