We are complicated beasties full of other beastie's stuff. Read here all about it or at least the New Yorker's take on viruses and how they made us grow as a species. There is a whole new world of thinking about evolution and it's come about in the last very few years. We can now look at our DNA and see the remnants of millions of years of changes in us amongst, and, and this was the surprising thing to me, the tattered remains of some of the millions of viruses which have attacked us. They are now part of our DNA, down there in the 98% of it that we don't even use anymore for anything. (At least micro biologists don't think we do right now.)
We use about 2% of the billions of links in our DNA to make new individual, unique, human beings. 8% of the remaining chains is busted up pieces of ancient retro-viruses. We are strange creatures, but retro-viruses are way stranger.
Science didn't even have a clue that there could be such a thing as a retrovirus, something that can make DNA from RNA, until thirty years ago. Now some micro-biologists and paleovirologists think, just like the fellow said, what did not kill us made us stronger.
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As for retro-virii, check out both the books "Darwin's Radio" and "Darwin's Children" by Greg Bear at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin's_Radio
I think you will be fairly amazed at what Greg Bear thought about that very small subject.
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