Science: Flu from Venus?

If it could be proved that germs reach the earth from other planets, scientists would be very much surprised. But last week scientists were considering the idea. Professor Louis Backman of Uppsala University, Stockholm, a pharmacologist and medical writer well known throughout Europe, had suggested that it was entirely possible that organisms causing recent flu epidemics had come from Venus, Jupiter or Mars.

Scientists have debated such possibilities for nearly a hundred years. The great physicist Helmholtz believed that life was brought to the earth by meteorites.* Laboratory workers have known for some time...

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