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Asked by pickle to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
Question: is there a way of making one type of bacteria / virus extinced or is there to much of it and does it grow too quickly
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Mark Fogg answered on 17 Jun 2010:
The smallpox virus has been made extinct. It used to be all over the world. It was officially eradicated in 1979.
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Michael Loughlin answered on 17 Jun 2010:
I have never heard of any bacteria becomeing extinct although small pox was pretty much eradicated by vaccination..so it is possible just very hard to be sure
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Mark Travis answered on 17 Jun 2010:
There are drugs that can kill certain types of bacteria/virus very effectively (for example, antibiotics have revelotionise modern medicine by being able to kill bacteria and stop infections). But in terms of making the bacteria/virus extinct (i.e. wiping out in the whole of the world), there are so many different sources of bacteria/virus, and they can grown very quickly, this is very difficult.
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Panos Soultanas answered on 18 Jun 2010:
With vaccinations aginst certian bacteria and viruses we can make particular species nearly extinct (perhaps extinct). Microbes are very adaptable though and as you said, they grow quickly which gives them an evolutionary advantage because they can select for the best mutations that help them to survive in changing environments.
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Sarah Burl answered on 18 Jun 2010:
In a way vaccines have done this. There is no more Smallpox in the world anymore, we have eradicated it. Only some labs have a stock of this and they are trying to get rid of these also so there is not riskof anything getting back into the environment. We no longer need to vaccinate against Smallpox anymore because the vaccine was so successful.
We are nearly at this stage for polio also but we need to keep vaccinating for a few more years to get this to the same stage.
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