RE: Re: starship-design: The Way ahead & Bugs

[A West <andrew@hmm.u-net.com>]

>The example of the American
>Indians has already been introduced byt someone else, but I would like to
>point out that it was only a trivial example of what is possible. The
>pathogens that decimated the American Indians at least shared _some_
>evolutionary background.

That was my point - a virus is far more likely to affect a biology with
which is shares _some_ eveloutionary background - I would consider it
highly unlikely that a completely alien biology would contain virii capable
of doing us much harm, but an alien biology which wasn't totally disimmilar
to our own would comtain considerably more virii capable of dealing us damage.

Andrew West