<story><title>The human genome is full of viruses</title><url>https://medium.com/medical-myths-and-models/the-human-genome-is-full-of-viruses-c18ba52ac195</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>crazygringo</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Even after recovering from an infection there will always be a piece of that virus encoded within your DNA.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I did a little research and this appears to be &lt;i&gt;almost completely false&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;This sentence makes it sound like every time you get a cold, your body&amp;#x27;s DNA is permanently altered. Which would be insane if true.&lt;p&gt;The reality is that this insane outcome is incredibly rare, but nevertheless has happened enough times &lt;i&gt;over all of human history&lt;/i&gt; that we have genetic code from viruses in our DNA, because a virus at some point managed to alter the DNA in a sperm or egg cell.&lt;p&gt;But the quoted sentence is just &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; how infections work 99.99...+% of the time. The cold I got last month isn&amp;#x27;t in my DNA forever. It&amp;#x27;s very sloppy writing that appears to be aiming for sensationalism instead of accuracy.</text></comment>
<story><title>The human genome is full of viruses</title><url>https://medium.com/medical-myths-and-models/the-human-genome-is-full-of-viruses-c18ba52ac195</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tim333</author><text>There was an interesting article a while back on them playing a part in schizophrenia. &amp;quot;The Insanity Virus&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.discovermagazine.com&amp;#x2F;mind&amp;#x2F;the-insanity-virus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.discovermagazine.com&amp;#x2F;mind&amp;#x2F;the-insanity-virus&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>