Adding to Cecil’s argument inthis column, that vampires aren’t susceptible to blood-borne viruses, is the trope of the moral vampire. Good vampires, when they don’t feed on animal blood or volunteer at Red Cross collection centers, prey on those who are already dying or miserably sick, much like wolves thin the unhealthy caribou out of the herd.
In Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, the vampires that are loyal to the Union get their sustenance in peacetime from people dying in alleys. In Christopher Moore’s Blood Sucking Fiends, the female protagonist takes those in the last stages of AIDS gently into the next world.
Predators have defenses against the diseases of the prey, whatever they are (usually cast-iron stomachs). I think it’s a safe inference that vampires have nothing to fear from mortal diseases, because otherwise the whole thing would fall apart, and vampires are clearly thriving.
Stephen R. Donaldson’s short story “Penance” has a similar premise: An “ethical vampire”, seeking redemption and love in the teachings of the High Church which despises his kind unconditionally, foreswears feeding on any life not already doomed. The wrinkle is that the touch of a vampire’s blood can also bring healing and strength to another normal but unhealthy person, at the price of grieviously weakening the vampire. The obligation to heal those who can be healed, and to feed only on those who cannot be healed, is the penance of the title. And how the vampire is justified before a court of the High Church is the conflict of the story, and the twist ending.
Sometimes I think Donaldson’s a better short-story writer than novelist. This was a good one.
The vampire in Blood Oath (great book - kind of a mix of Tom Clancy, The X-Files and Dracula) by Christopher Farnsworth, and its sequels, is a deeply conflicted Christian. He feeds only on animal blood, but forever craves human blood and must fight temptation.
I don’t remember any discussion of whether blood-borne diseases would affect him.
IMO this column is evidence that the newspaper Straight Dope column is dying (as opposed to this message board, which is thriving). Cecil used to answer interesting questions about the real world. Now he’s reduced to answering dumb questions about fictional characters.
He doesn’t do such things often, but he does have a sense of humour. And he’s always enjoyed questions that have a certain whimsy, which sometimes are not based in reality.
Well, in the real world, that’s at most only occasionally true. Lots of parasites not only can but need to go through two hosts, getting into the second host when it eats the first host.
Many bacteria aren’t all that choosey, and many kinds of viruses regularly jump from species to species-- influenza for instance (leading to “bird flu” or “swine flu”), or ebola.
What’s interesting is that many parasites can manipulate the behavior of their first host to make them more likely to be eaten by a predator. For instance toxoplasmosis, which needs to go through both rats/mice and cats as part of its life cycle, makes infected rats less afraid, particularly less afraid of the smell of cat urine.
One could imagine something very similar for human/ vampire parasites (assuming treating vampires as more or less biological creatures, or alternatively imagining some kind of parasite with the same kind of supernatural existence as vampires).
On the other hand, Humans and other primates seem depressingly vulnerable to all sorts of infectious agents. Wouldn’t vampires have the same systemic vulnerablilities?
In some genres, vampires are shown to experience the effects of whatever is in the victim’s bloodstream. In Anne Rice’s canon (the movie anyway), they feel the effects of absinthe and laudanum in the victim’s blood; in fact, Lestat was fooled into thinking some victims were still alive due to the drugs keeping the blood warm (plothole: he should have heard their hearts). In the movie, it’s his accidental drinking of “dead” blood, along with Claudia slitting his throat and letting all his blood out, that led to his apparent demise. However, we learn that neither kills Lestat. And in the books, Lestat makes his own mother a vampire and she goes full gusto, drinking a man past death before Lestat remembers to tell her not to. She suffers no ill effects.
In the St. Germain series by Yarbro, he gets off on the adrenaline pumping through the bloodstream, whether due to fear, or the height of orgasm. (Guess which he chooses.)
And I can’t remember the specific canon (I’m thinking Buffy), but alcohol in the victim’s blood can also affect a vampire. Then again, they can drink actual alcohol and eat burritos so well…
So my theory is that whatever the victim does have, is taken in, enjoyed (or tortured by) for a while, then the body’s natural healing takes over.
Mod note: I’m not sure if spoiler tags are needed, Sister Vigilante, but someone reported it, so what the heck. It also serves as a reminder to others, please not to reveal etc etc. (Like, in War of the Worlds with Vampires, viruses are clearly fatal to the Martian vampires… )
Hmmm. I have a vague recollection of some novel set in a world ruled by vampires in which the vampire empire falls when a disease comes along that hits vampires much harder then humans.
Spider Robinson has a vampire who is an alcoholic, who got that way by drinking the blood of winos. He spent years getting his fix by being the “teetotaler” who drives his drunk buddies home, and drinking their blood on the way. As a benevolent side effect something about his feeding process eliminated hangovers.
)
