As a thought experiment, if an advanced civilization created humans, could the viruses in and around us have been intended to protect us from other beings, or does that idea clash with what we know about viruses?
Could viruses be a built-in defense if aliens made us?
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PebbleKite
Answers
It’s an imaginative premise, but viruses don’t look like a reliable defense system. Many infect bacteria or other microbes, and some cause disease in humans. Their effects depend on the specific virus and its host, not on a general ability to protect us from an outside threat.
There’s also no evidence that humans were created by aliens, so the idea works better as science fiction than as an explanation for why viruses exist.
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You could make it work as a story premise, but you’d need to define what “protection” means. A virus that harms an invading organism might also harm humans, and a virus can’t be assumed to recognize an alien as a threat just because it’s unfamiliar.
A more grounded version might be that microbes sometimes affect ecosystems in ways that indirectly benefit their hosts. That’s a different claim from viruses being deliberately planted to defend humanity.
QuietLantern:
Right, and a defense that spreads or changes unpredictably could become a danger to the people it was meant to protect.
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PebbleKite:
So the presence of lots of viruses wouldn’t, by itself, point to a protective design?