3 ms·

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine

• btilly 6y ago
  Your clarification was less correct than what you replied to. Vaccines are not all attenuated. Often they are killed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inactivated_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inactivated_vaccine for more on that.
  • sunopener 6y ago
    aka "poisoned" to death.
  • datameta 6y ago
    It's interesting that the word used for inactivated viruses is "killed" rather than, for instance, "destroyed". Destroyed might not be a better word choice because it may imply that the structure is completely taken apart but point being: (not to throw semantics into the mix just for kicks) does modern science consider viruses to be alive?
    • sukilot 6y ago
      > does modern science consider viruses to be alive? This is a (bad) philisophical question for people who do not understand the concept of "spectrum", not a scientific question.
      • datameta 6y ago
        I don't believe there is such a thing as a bad philosophical question. Perhaps some questions aren't yet worth the time investment to think about. When we engineer self-replicating machinery (or rather, before then) this caveat is worth defining.
        • btilly 6y ago
          I disagree. Deciding where on the spectrum between non-life and life we declare something to be alive is endlessly debatable and non-actionable. The fact that in time technology will add more points on that spectrum does not change this fact.
• sunopener 6y ago
  aka "poisoned" to near-death