what lives

[webbo3]

this may sound stupid but you know the adverts for household cleaners ....the ones that kill 99.9% of all known germs DEAD ....well ........what dosent it kill?

[andy-hughes]

It probably does kill 100%, but advertising law prevents any advert from saying the product is 'perfect'. In a similar way, you cannot say your product contains 'magic'.

[Fatboy]

Well it dosen't kill the other 0.1% of the germs that are imune to the chemicals used.

in any living organism there is a very small percentage imune to a certain chemical, desease or virus. due to gentics.

(there is someone or some people out there imune to cancer, just gotta find them.)

[ludwig]

Perhaps it kills the remainder alive, as opposed to killing them dead.

[spaced]

andy is correct. If they say that it kills 100% of germs, and then you go and get a virus, you could sue. Therefore they place 99.9% instead of 100%

[imflyingaway]

the 0.01%percent of good germs are not killed

[gary baldy]

I'm sure it doesnt kill lots of things. I would suggest it would have trouble with bubonic plague, botulism, MRSI, beri beri, necrotizing fasciitis and dried-on weetabix.

[qapmoc]

If your Weetabix is alive you must be keeping it way past the ''use by'' date on the packet.

[MrPahoehoe]

Ok, I don't really know but I'm going to have call you there Fatboy. I don't think an organism has the potential to be immune to some sort of toxic chemicals. I conceed that a given dose of a chemical will almost certainly not kill 100% of a population (one of the reasons for the 99.9% thing?), but it doesn't mean that the surviving individuals are immune.

I can imagine genetics making a difference with desease or viruses, but i can't see that making a difference with chemicals, as they work on the molecular level. For instance I don't fancy genetic armour versus a bucket of acid......unless of course your an alien ;-).

[shazziexxx]

organisms including bacteria and viruses express genes at varying levels, leading to diversity in the phenotypes of the organisms in these populations. Depending on the genes, certain bacteria may have an advantage over other due to a higher or in some cases, a lower level of expression of that gene. Hence, in times of stress, the majority of a bacterial population will be killed but the minority of cells expressing the fluctuating levels of the gene will survive.....meaning cleaners and the like will never completely wipe out a population.

and someone up there said some people are immune to cancer....not true. Everyone is susceptible to cancer. Cancer is caused by mutations in DNA that switch off tumour supresser genes. These mutations are caused by things like UV radiation, smoking, exposure to carcinogenic chemical etc.