The only way that analogy works is with some kind of self replicating prion disease, which would get selected out pretty quickly. The main fallacy that people t

The only way that analogy works is with some kind of self replicating prion disease, which would get selected out pretty quickly. The main fallacy that people tend to make drawing comparisons with biology and computers is the degree to which biology is in a stable equilibrium (occasionally punctuated). There are lots of endogenous retro viruses (ERVs) in various states of genetic activity. However the only time this comes up is when considering ERVs from e.g. pigs for organ transplants. I remember reading some time ago about an effort to remove all the ERVs from a line of pigs to make that safe. I don't remember what happened of that. You do see some unicellular organisms that will prioritise maintenance of proteins over DNA if the proteins have low copy number and are critical for survival.