Quotes & Sayings About Viruses

This year, 1996, has been designated the 'Year of the Vaccine,' commemorating the 200th anniversary of Edward Jenner's vaccination of James Phipps with cowpox virus and subsequent challenge with smallpox virus. Insight into the nature of viruses, and how viruses interact with mammalian cells, has evolved since the turn of the century. — Peter C. Doherty

If the structure that serves as a template (the gene or virus molecule) consists of, say, two parts, which are themselves complementary In structure, then each of these parts can serve as the mould for the production of a replica of the other part, and the complex of two complementary parts thus can serve as the mould for the production of duplicates of itself. — Linus Pauling

What more fiendish proof of cosmic irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us for following orders? — John Updike

The other naturally occurring viruses, like ebola, are not durable enough to generate a runaway epidemic. — Martin J. Rees

Jobs had a tougher time navigating the controversies over Apple's desire to keep tight control over which apps could be downloaded onto the iPhone and iPad. Guarding against apps that contained viruses or violated the user's privacy made sense; preventing apps that took users to other websites to buy subscriptions, rather than doing it through the iTunes Store, at least had a business rationale. But Jobs and his team went further: They decided to ban any app that defamed people, might be politically explosive, or was deemed by Apple's censors to be pornographic. — Walter Isaacson

There is some research that suggests that viruses like the flu are really actually kind of at the razor's edge when it comes to mutation. They're mutating so fast that if they mutated much faster they would actually develop a lot of harmful mutations that could slow them down and cripple them and eventually literally drive them extinct. — Carl Zimmer

Vaccines are little pieces of bacteria or viruses injected into the body to give the immune system an education. They work by ramping up your own defensive system so that you're ready to fight the bacteria or virus upon first contact, without becoming sick first. — Rene Fester Kratz

There's very little that shocks me because I consider life a miracle so I guess what shocks me is that life exists. How the hell did we get here? What shocks me is that bacteria alter their genes and resist antibiotics and viruses resist vaccines. — Bernie Siegel

Victimless crimes are the lifeline of the RIGHT virus. And there is a growing recognition, even in official quarters, that victimless crimes should be removed from the books or subject to minimal penalties. — William S. Burroughs

Humanity is just a virus with shoes. — Bill Hicks

In view of all the deadly computer viruses that have been spreading lately, Weekend Update would like to remind you: when you link up to another computer, you're linking up to every computer that that computer has ever linked up to. — Dennis Miller

I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us - albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human's efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Form is the host; content is the virus. — Jeff Noon

Right now we're in an arms race with the microbes, because, effectively, we're operating on the same scale that they are. The viruses are both our enemy and our arms manufacturer. — Steven Johnson

Since the show [Helix] is based in real science, there are real-life epidemic scares out there, throughout history, where there are these huge viruses that have wiped out huge populations. So, we're dealing with something that the CDC hasn't seen before, but it comes from a virus. That's something that's based in reality, and then you put the science fiction on that and it's a really interesting combination. — Kyra Zagorsky

We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. — David Graeber

Nita stood there horrified. "You just killed him!"
"No," the Lone One said, "you did. Not a bad start, but then you were intent enough on killing something."
All around Nita, the snarling of the viruses was getting louder and louder. "Anyway, don't be too concerned about Pralaya; I'll find another of his people to replace him if there's need. Now, though, matters stand as I told you they stood. All we need is your conscious answer to the question. Can we do business?"
Nita stood there, frozen.
And another voice spoke out of the darkness.
"Fairest and Fallen," Kit said, "one more time ... greeting and defiance. — Diane Duane

Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as viruses, live inside the body of their hosts. They multiply and spread from one host to the other, feeding off their hosts, weakening them, and sometimes even killing them. As long as the hosts live long enough to pass along the parasite, it cares little about the condition of its host. In just this fashion, cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans. They — Yuval Noah Harari

Laughter is a virus that infects you with humanity. — Luis Alberto Urrea

There is nothing - no program, no hobby, no vice, no crime - that does not 'create jobs'. Tsunamis, computer viruses and shooting convenience store clerks all 'create jobs'. So that claim misses the plot; it applies to all so is an argument in favor of none. Instead of an argument on the merits, it is an admission that one has no such arguments. — Chris Horner

Although cancer is not universally caused by viruses, certain viruses cause particular cancers, such as the human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Would the end be brutish and short? Or would it be long and drawn out? People dying slowly of every illness under the sun. From viruses that seeped from under jungle rocks. From infections received while making love. From fratricide. Genocide. Hatred that intensified over decades, centuries, until nothing could stop its rolling over and flattening entire peoples, races, continents. Would the passion and joy of future generations be expressed in acts of hate, as acts of "sex" were now routinely expressed in acts of violence? — Alice Walker

The streets were more empty than usual - everyone who had someone was probably at home, cuddling them up, waiting for the bombs to fall or the shooting to start or the diseases to spread or just for the chips in their heads to catch viruses, melt, and drip out of their brains. — Mary Anne Mohanraj

Being overly sensitive to rejection can become a destructive virus. — Robert Herjavec

The modern diet is grossly deficient in hundreds of important plant-derived immunity-building compounds which makes us highly vulnerable to viruses, infections and disease. — Joel Fuhrman

There are many different causes of the scarring. Viruses are common. Hepatitis B, hepatitis C, what we call autoimmune diseases where the body attacks the liver itself such as primary biliary cirrhosis is an autoimmune disease; sclerosing cholangitis is an autoimmune disease; and so those diseases where the liver is being destroyed by either the virus or an autoimmune disease, it can only scar, and why it doesn't regenerate has to do with the fact that there is this ongoing scar tissue that blocks that regeneration. — John Roberts

Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses. — Arthur C. Clarke

Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious. — Wangari Maathai

[Physicists] feel that the field of bacterial viruses is a fine playground for serious children who ask ambitious questions. — Max Delbruck

We live in a dancing matrix of viruses; they dart, rather like bees, from organism to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, transplanting grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party. — Lewis Thomas

Over the past few days I have been fighting off a virus that has affected the majority of my band and crew. — Mika.

Poxviruses keep herds and swarms of living things in check, preventing them from growing too large and overwhelming their habitats. Viruses are an essential part of nature. If all the viruses on the planet were to disappear, a global catastrophe would ensue, and the natural ecosystems of the earth would collapse in a spectacular crash under burgeoning populations of insects. Viruses are nature's crowd control, and a poxvirus can thin a crowd in a hurry. — Richard Preston

The nucleic acids, as constituents of living organisms, are comparable In importance to proteins. There is evidence that they are Involved In the processes of cell division and growth, that they participate In the transmission of hereditary characters, and that they are important constituents of viruses. An understanding of the molecular structure of the nucleic acids should be of value In the effort to understand the fundamental phenomena of life. — Linus Pauling

Swine flu is not an anomaly. We know that swine flu - like the vast majority of new outbreaks - comes from animals. We should be monitoring those animals and the humans that come into contact with them, so we can catch these viruses early, before they infect major cities and spread throughout the world. — Nathan Wolfe

We all know many people who have been through this reality, and how it changes them. This happens to be an area I know something about. It's a virus. — Christopher Guest

Prejudice will always exist. So will sickness and disease, but that scarcely seems sufficient reason for telling our medical scientists to put on their hats, close up their laboratories, and give the spirochetes, bacilli and viruses a free hand. — Margaret Halsey

Nine out of ten humans killed? And you're not bothered."
A look of mysterious thoughtfulness crossed his face. "A virus can be useful to a species by thinning it out," he said.
A scream cut the air. It sounded nonhuman.
He took his eyes off the water and looked around. "Hear that pheasant? That's what I like about the Bighorn River," he said.
"Do you find viruses beautiful?"
"Oh, yeah," he said softly. "Isn't it true that if you stare into the eyes of a cobra, the fear has another side to it? The fear is lessened as you begin to see the essence of the beauty. Looking at Ebola under an electron microscope is like looking at a gorgeously wrought ice castle. The thing is so cold. So totally pure." He laid a perfect cast on the water, and eddies took the fly down. (92) — Richard Preston

We have a show tonight. I've never missed a show. Not even the time I had that virus they kept saying only raccoons get. — LIZ

Brain-like in function and speed, the internet connected over one-third of the global population. Three million searches every minute; one-hundred-trillion emails every year; more Facebook users than people in North America, all with with personal photos, videos, apps, and chats. There were dozens of dating sites, an immersive universe called 2nd Life that boasted a country-sized GDP, a slew of viruses, obnoxious advertising, more than a billion photos of naked women, and seventy-two hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. This was the environment where the friendship flourished. — Jake Vander Ark

Racism is a virus. And since nobody's really looking too hard for a cure it reproduces itself over and over again. — Marita Golden

Modern cyberspace is a deadly festering swamp, teeming with dangerous programs such as 'viruses,' 'worms,' 'Trojan horses' and 'licensed Microsoft software' that can take over your computer and render it useless. — Dave Barry

The entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth's atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts. — James Lovelock

We really depend on viruses for our complete survival. — Carl Zimmer

I was addicted to hacking, more for the intellectual challenge, the curiosity, the seduction of adventure; not for stealing, or causing damage or writing computer viruses. — Kevin Mitnick

Here are the names of some emerging viruses: Lassa. Rift Valley. Oropouche. Rocio. Q. Guanarito. VEE. Monkeypox. Dengue. Chikungunya. The hantaviruses. Machupo. Junin. The rabieslike strains Mokola and Duvenhage. LeDantec. The Kyasanur Forest brain virus. — Richard Preston

Did you know that only a tiny minority of viruses cause illness in humans? No one knows how many viruses there are, but their real role, when you get right down to it, is to aid in mutations, to create diversity among life forms. I've read a lot of books on the subject-when you don't need much sleep you have a lot of time to read-and I can tell you that if it weren't for viruses, mankind would never have evolved on this planet. Some viruses get right inside the DNA and change your genetic code, did you know that? And no one can say for sure that HIV, for example, won't one day prove to have been rewriting our genetic code in a way that's essential to our survival as a race. I'm a man who consciously commits murders and scares the hell out of people and makes them reconsider everything, so I'm definitely malignant, yet I think I play a necessary role in this world. — Ryu Murakami

Computer viruses are alive. — Stephen Hawking

Whenever I tell people I'm a misanthrope they react as though that's a bad thing, the idiots. I live in London, for God's sake. Have you walked down Oxford Street recently? Misanthropy's the only thing that gets you through it. It's not a personality flaw, it's a skill.
It's nothing to do with sheer numbers. Move me to a remote cottage in the Hebrides and I'd learn to despise the postman, even if he only visited once a year. I can't abide other people, with their stink and their noise and their irritating ringtones. Bill Hicks called the human race 'a virus with shoes', and if you ask me he was being unduly hard on viruses; I'd consider a career in serial killing if the pay wasn't so bad. — Charlie Brooker

Ecological disturbance causes diseases to emerge. Shake a tree, and things fall out. Nearly all zoonotic diseases result from infection by one of six kinds of pathogen: viruses, bacteria, fungi, protists (a group of — David Quammen

If there is delay in getting culling teams out, delay in any part of the chain, even weeks, that could have great implications for the virus to spread. — David Nabarro

Once the cells in a biological machine stop working, it can never be started again. It goes into a cascade of decay, falling toward disorder and randomness. Except in the case of viruses. They can turn off and go dead. Then, if they come in contact with a living system, they switch on and multiply. (194) — Richard Preston

She took pictures of germs, viruses, and people reacting to germs and viruses. On weekends, for extra money, she photographed weddings, which really wasn't that much of a stretch — David Sedaris

Almost every PC owner has lost a weekend sorting through the debris of worms, viruses, spyware, and broken permissions. Since Windows was originally created in the pre-Internet days, programmers didn't worry about closing holes in the operating system. Unfortunately, hackers and spammers could easily exploit these vulnerabilities. While security continues to improve with each new release, the Windows operating system is still based on a pre-Internet model, which is prone to viruses. Mac OS X was created only a few years ago with ultimate security and stability. There are no known Mac OS X viruses, and Windows Word Macros (a common home to threats) — Hunter Travis

Growing numbers of us are acknowledging with grief that many forms of supremacy - Christian, white, male, heterosexual, and human - are deeply embedded not just in Christian history but also in Christian theology. We are coming to see that in hallowed words like almighty, sovereignty, kingdom, dominion, supreme, elect, chosen, clean, remnant, sacrifice, lord, and even God, dangerous viruses often lie hidden, malware that must be identified and purged from our software if we want our future to be different from our past. We are realizing that our ancestors didn't merely misinterpret a few Scriptures in their day; rather, they consistently practiced a dangerous form of interpretation that deserves to be discredited, rejected, and replaced by a morally wiser form of interpretation today. (We — Brian D. McLaren

Bits of ignorance are like viruses that are copied and spread by interaction. — Seth Lloyd

Every time somebody new gets the Ebola virus, it mutates. — Glenn Beck

Surrealism is merely the reflection of the death process. It is one of the manifestations of a life becoming extinct, a virus which quickens the inevitable end. — Henry Miller

The oceans are thought to contain of the order of 4x1030 viruses, equivalent in mass to 75 million blue whales. — Franklin M. Harold

We can be exposed to HIV many times without being chronically infected. Our immune system will get rid of the virus within a few weeks, if you have a good immune system. — Luc Montagnier

Nanotechnology experts are developing a bionic immune system composed of millions of nano-robots, who would inhabit our bodies, open blocked blood vessels, fight viruses and bacteria, eliminate cancerous cells and even reverse ageing processes. — Yuval Noah Harari

Viruses have no morality, no sense of good and evil, the deserving or the undeserving ... AIDS is not the swift sword with which the Lord punishes the evil practitioners of male homosexuality and intravenous drug use. It is simply an opportunistic virus that does what it has to do to stay alive. — Chris Crutcher

Parasites are not only incredibly diverse; they are also incredibly successful. There are parasitic stretches of DNA in your own genes, some of which are called retrotransposons. Many of the parasitic stretches were originally viruses that entered our DNA. Most of them don't do us any harm. They just copy and insert themselves in other parts of our DNA, basically replicating themselves. Sometimes they hop into other species and replicate themselves in a new host. According to one estimate, roughly one-third to one-half of all human DNA is basically parasitic. — Carl Zimmer

We're shaking loose viruses and dislodging them from their natural ecological limitations, places where they aren't very abundant and have competition, even within a single animal. We introduce them into a new, rich habitat called the human population, where they can flourish more abundantly and cause more trouble. — David Quammen

A hundred million crystallized polio viruses could cover the period at the end of this sentence. There could be two hundred and fifty Woodstock Festivals of viruses sitting on that period-the combined populations of Great Britain and France-and you would never know it. — Anonymous

I am much more powerful today than the old programs and mind viruses that I absorbed in my childhood. — Wayne Dyer

Epidemics follow patterns because diseases follow patterns. Viruses spread; they reproduce; they die. — Jill Lepore

One general theory for the origin of AIDS goes that, during the late nineteen-sixties, a new and lucrative business grew up in Africa, the export of primates to industrialized countries for use in medical research. Uganda was one of the biggest sources of these animals. As the monkey trade was established throughout central Africa, the native workers in the system, the monkey trappers and handlers, were exposed to large numbers of wild monkeys, some of which were carrying unusual viruses. These animals, in turn, were being jammed together in cages, exposed to one another, passing viruses back and forth. Furthermore, different species of monkeys were mixed together. It was a perfect setup for an outbreak of a virus that could jump species. It was also a natural laboratory for rapid virus evolution, and possibly it led to the creation of HIV. Did HIV crash into the human race as a result of the monkey trade? — Richard Preston

In our interconnected world, novel technology could empower just one fanatic, or some weirdo with a mindset of those who now design computer viruses, to trigger some kind of disaster. Indeed, catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure - error rather than terror. — Martin Rees

We need not seek our own best selves, and in the meantime we inoculate ourselves against the viruses of age and idealism, which, as the advertising agencies well know, depress sales and sour the feasts of consumption. — Lewis H. Lapham

She saw the children. They have been given viruses to educate them. From three weeks old they could speak and do basic arithmetic. By ten, they had been made adult, forced like flowers to bloom early. But they were not flowers of love. They were flowers of work, to be put to work. There was no time. — Geoff Ryman

In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses. — Marshall McLuhan

My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of relatively stable symbiosis with its human host; that is to say, the word virus (the other Half) has established itself so firmly as an accepted part of the human organism that it can now sneer at gangster viruses like smallpox and turn them in to the Pasteur Institute. — William S. Burroughs

The only kinds of ways we have to deal with viruses are old school, so vaccines for example are very effective, but the first vaccines were invented in the 1700's, so we're talking about technology that is over 200 years-old. — Carl Zimmer

An example of how a viral transmission is different than normal information transmission can be illustrated thusly: if information were spread in a memetic fashion, it would infect a subject, and, were the information's traits conducive to the information's survival, then the subject would accept the idea. This is strongly contrasted with information theory, in which the information is accepted based on how useful it is to an individual, e.g. the idea is accepted because it helps the subject survive if they accept it. Viruses, being obligate parasites, do not always help their host (in this case, the subject) survive. — Idav Kelly

Maybe I should mention it: I was not from the beginning mainly interested in papilloma virus; I was mainly interested in infectious agents in human cancer. So papilloma viruses came up as the most likely candidate from my viewpoint. — Harald Zur Hausen

If we can contain and monitor animal viruses at an earlier stage - when they're first entering human populations, preferably before they've had a chance to become human-adapted, certainly before they've had a chance to spread - we can head off pandemics altogether. — Nathan Wolfe

By giving words the latitude she does, (Marianne) Van Hirtum emphasizes their contagious qualities: they become almost like viruses, with which it is necessary to put oneself in harmony by sympathetic magic if one is not to be overwhelmed ... What is essential is to become one with the sickness, that is, in the context of language as a whole, to enter into contact with words. — Michael Richardson

In the wild a plant and its pests are continually coevolving, in a dance of resistance and conquest that can have no ultimate victor. But coevolution ceases in an orchard of grafted trees, since they are genetically identical from generation to generation. The problem very simply is that the apple trees no longer reproduce sexually, as they do when they're grown from seed, and sex is nature's way of creating fresh genetic combinations. At the same time the viruses, bacteria, fungi, and insects keep very much at it, reproducing sexually and continuing to evolve until eventually they hit on the precise genetic combination that allows them to overcome whatever resistance the apples may have once possessed. Suddenly total victory is in the pests' sight - unless, that is, people come to the tree's rescue, wielding the tools of modern chemistry. — Michael Pollan

The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined. — E. O. Wilson

Without equity, pandemic battles will fail. Viruses will simply recirculate, and perhaps undergo mutations or changes that render vaccines useless, passing through the unprotected populations of the planet. — Laurie Garrett

When the AIDS epidemic broke, because I happened to be a science nerd and knew a lot about viruses and a lot about that virus at the time, I felt a moral obligation to go out and try to stem the fear and get out and explain to people what the disease was and how it worked. — Morgan Fairchild

In terms of dangers, such as viruses, fraud or identity theft, I don't think we were thinking about that at all when we got started. If we had been worried about that, the net might have been better today, but we might not have even got there. — Bob Kahn

Tobacco, UV rays, viruses, heredity, and age are the main causes of cancer. — Harold E. Varmus

If we are lucky, they were never retarded enough to create computer viruses and will have no such things as firewalls and security like we have. If they have never experienced a full blown computer failure we'll introduce them to the concept — Thomas Wilson

Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference. So unless were going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes. — Hugh Laurie

A strong feeling of adventure is animating those who are working on bacterial viruses, a feeling that they have a small part in the great drive towards a fundamental problem in biology. — Max Delbruck

Viruses have to live somewhere. They can only replicate in living creatures. So, when the Ebola virus disappears between outbreaks, it has to be living in some reservoir host, presumably some species of animal. — David Quammen

Surveying the way viruses have been discovered in the past, I came to the conclusion that I could use my technology that I developed as a graduate student - DNA microarray technology - to create a chip that would simultaneously screen for all viruses ever discovered, and furthermore have the built-in capability of discovering new viruses. — Joseph DeRisi

From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons. Neurological illnesses such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and burnout syndrome mark the landscape of pathology at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They are not infections, but infarctions; they do not follow from the negativity of what is immunologically foreign, but from an excess of positivity. Therefore, they elude all technologies and techniques that seek to combat what is alien. — Byung-Chul Han

Viruses face four basic challenges: how to get from one host to another, how to penetrate a cell within that host, how to commandeer the cell's equipment and resources for producing multiple copies of itself, and how to get back out - out of the cell, out of the host, on to the next. A — David Quammen

Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we have genetically rearranged various viruses and bacteria as part of our medical research. In fact, we have been able to create entirely new types of DNA molecules by splicing together the genetic information from different organisms - recombinant DNA. — James D. Watson

When you put someone on therapy, you lower the level of virus such that it makes it very difficult for them to infect others. — Anthony S. Fauci

Deeply entrenched fantasies and persistent, most cherished illusions can at least partly be explained as 'bugs' or 'viruses' in, or 'mis-activations' of, our sophisticated and highly sensitive intellectual software, which is driven but also easily disrupted by, and addicted to, our restless and insatiable need for meaning, order, control, and reassurance. — Azar Gat

[Computer viruses] switch from one country to another, from one jurisdiction to another - moving around the world, using the fact that we don't have the capability to globally police operations like this. So the Internet is as if someone [had] given free plane tickets to all the online criminals of the world. — Mikko Hypponen

When you're a hammer (as the saying goes), all your problems look like nails. If you're a meteorite expert pondering the sudden extinction of boatloads of species, you'll want to say an impact did it. If you're an igneous petrologist, volcanoes did it. If you're into spaceborne bioclouds, an interstellar virus did it. If you're a hypernova expert, gamma rays did it. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Terrorism, like viruses, is everywhere. There is a global perfusion of terrorism, which accompanies any system of domination as though it were its shadow, ready to activate itself anywhere, like a double agent. — Jean Baudrillard

Science that fails to embrace all living beings is far more dangerous than any virus! — Steve Simmons

One of the big challenges now is to figure out just how many viruses there really are in the human genome. So far the estimate is 8.3% of our genome is virus, but it actually could be a lot higher. — Carl Zimmer

The Internet browser is the most susceptible to viruses. The browser is naive about downloading and executing software. Google is trying to help by releasing the Chrome browser as open source. — Vint Cerf

Well, either way - peasant or pheasant - it tastes like chicken. My patients bring me gifts too. Things like gift cards ... and viruses. — Penny Reid