You gave a great explanation. But it ended with where all us skeptics end at. No proof - its a best guess. The fact remains a hundred plus years of ‘virology’ and no one can produce one. The idea they are far too long to actually isolate is based on….what? Since you haven’t isolated one. And the number isn’t in the trillions, what was it, 30,000? Prove it. That isn’t an outsize number. The problem is you BEGIN with the belief in viruses, you assume a virus is going around, and then you go to great lengths to determine which type it is based on past studies which began the same way. It blew me away how shaky viral science is. And the excuses are not valid. ‘Too long’. ‘Too small’! I have heard that one from doctors. Too small!!
I'm glad you stuck with me Mystic William and kept reading my substack! My ex (also a scientist) used to have a saying "you can't prove it won't happen" which we would laughingly apply to many scientific questions. It definitely applies to this topic. Also, we are never supposed to use words like "I believe" in scientific discourse, but sometimes that's what it comes down to.
Luc Montaignier (sp?) before he died was interviewed and said ‘it is true we never isolated the HIV virus’!!! He cast some doubts on his own Nobel prize winning theories.
AIDS - I worked with AIDS/HIV sufferers. I very much doubted the Virus idea after a few years of working with them. There was a simpler explanation. Semen contains within it an immune suppressing chemical. So that the sperm is not killed by the host (the fertile female). This ingredient remains within the vagina. In the case of a gay male having unprotected anal sex this compound is injected into the blood stream via anal fissures and tears. These guys were having sex 200+ times a year with a hundred different partners. Sometimes 500 times a year. They were creating this syndrome within themselves. Eventually having turned off their immune systems 1000s of times they had ruined their immune systems. It was a simple and obvious explanation. My gay male clients did not want to hear this. It made it seem they did it to themselves. Which they had. No virus was required.
Herpes could easily be a parasite. Which can pass skin to skin. As might be measles and chicken pox etc. Again no virus needed.
Colds and seasonal flus could easily be the body cleansing itself around a weather change. Your body accumulates fluids in the summer and needs to shed this as the cold damp winter sets in. You get a cold. A simple cleansing. Not a disease.
Until actual proof emerges, which seems really doubtful at this point as it hasn’t been found yet, the explanation you gave which was good to me proves nothing. It did explain why you think what you do. But I really think you should examine this from the idea you BEGIN with a belief in viruses. You further BEGIN your examination of a sick person with a predisposition ‘this person must have a virus. Now, let’s find it.’ That isn’t science.
Did you ever see the video of him saying, I paraphrase, that if you run enough cycles you can find about any molecule that exists? PCR testing was the perfect tool for tyrants. Thank you for your work.
You also inspired another topic for me. You ask how do we know that the genome is 30K if we can't see it? In a nutshell, the pieces of sequence that are compiled to get the entire genome have regions of overlap. Think of a jigsaw puzzle. The genes that encode proteins to which antibodies are made after infection are spread throughout the genome. You can cross check amino acid sequences with genetic sequences. So, you can take the agent coronavirus, or whatever you want to call it, and incubate cells for several days then grind up the cells and some of those proteins will be present. You can purify them and get the amino acid sequence and line that up with the DNA sequence that was derived from the RNA collected from the patient sample. And you can find antibodies to those same proteins in people who have been exposed to the agent. The spike protein is 3819 nucleotides long, which we know not just from the DNA sequence but from the protein sequence of the purified protein. So that DNA sequence is spliced together from multiple overlapping sequencing data but the amino acid sequence confirms the nucleotide sequence because the nucleotides encode the amino acids. The spliced together sequences also contain regions on either side of that gene that overlap with other sequences that overlap with nucleocapsid protein which is 1210 nucleotides and the same is true for several other proteins from the "agent we call sarscov2" that have been isolated and purified and amino acid sequenced. So, we have this internal cross-check of those sequences and they can be lined up by overlaps in the DNA sequences to amount to a 30Kb sequence. This isn't all made up out of thin air, but I think a separate article that explains that with pictures (because this is a very visual concept) will help clarify it.
All of your thoughts are good ones, but the thing that puzzles me about your skepticism is why it's directed only at viruses. Chicken pox/measles --they could be caused by a parasite. Ok. But that also hasn't been proven or shown. They sequences of those pathogens are also too long to sequence in a single go. They're microscopic. How do you know they are there? At some point, one has to remain open to possibilities and come up with theories based on the information we have. Your last paragraph is really astute-that IS the problem. And that's not how I would approach a question, just FYI. It's how COVID and other illnesses are approached. I would entertain far more possibilities, but consider a virus as one of them. My issue with your approach is you would consider many other microscopic possibilities but NOT a virus. It's almost the same thing as what you are objecting to, but in reverse. In other words, I fully agree with your assessment of the medical profession in that last paragraph. Except your assertion that it isn't science. What you framed is a hypothesis --"This person must have a virus." And looking for it is the correct scientific approach. It's just that the tools to prove it definitively are not available which means the conclusion should be that it is a likely contributing factor to consider not "It is THE Factor".
I fully understand a strong reaction to being told you HAVE to get a vaccine against a virus to protect others from it. The easiest way to counter that is to demand better proof the thing against which you are being vaccinated exists. But what you want to call the thing that is comprised of nucleic acid and protein isn't the issue, right? It's what is being done in the name of eradicating it that is so objectionable.
This is the best article I've read so far, engaging with the reasonable questions of "skeptics" from the perspective of good faith use of available techniques in search of possible pathogens. Bravo! I appreciate that you do this with a tone of respect, not the very common contempt with the tag-line "Stay in your lane!" so readily hurled at intelligent people sincerely researching to find truth.
I'm a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which has a very different approach to health and the challenges to it. Yes, there are pathogens--including toxins and stress. Fear is deemed a strong pathogen, which weakens the body's defenses. We've had no shortage of irrational and constant assaults of fear for the past several years.
I would like to mention a well-documented experiment in response to this statement: "It is obviously impractical to directly investigate viral transmission in humans because no one is going to approve an experiment in which you expose healthy individuals to a potential pathogen." This is exactly what has happened for decades in injecting healthy children with childhood vaccines known to cause myriad harms, ostensibly to protect against diseases, which had disappeared prior to the debut of the vaccines. Not a single CDC schedule vaccine has been tested against a true placebo. (See ICAN and the testimony of Attorney Aaron Siri.)
We've been relentlessly preached to in the Covid Era--hardly over and done with--that contagion is an unassailable truth. Illness may not, after all, be contagious. You do beautifully address the crucial element of "terrain" in determining responses to "germs." One thing is for certain: the debilitating fear that weakens defenses can be quite contagious.
The most thorough (though very unappetizing and borderline unethical) experiment attempting (and failing) to prove transmission of viral illness was done by Dr. Milton Rosenau in the Study of Influenza at Harvard University in 1918-1919. It's in the medical archives: https://www.ggarchives.com/
"The experiment began with 100 volunteers from the Navy who had no history of influenza. Rosenau was the first to report on the experiments conducted at Gallops Island in November and December 1918. His first volunteers received first one strain and then several strains of Pfeiffer bacillus by spray and swab into their noses and throats and then into their eyes.
...When that procedure failed to produce disease, others were inoculated with mixtures of other organisms isolated from the throats and noses of influenza patients. Next, some volunteers received injections of blood from influenza patients...Each volunteer was to shake hands with each patient, to talk with him at close range, and to permit him to cough directly into his face.
None of the volunteers in these experiments developed influenza. Rosenau was clearly puzzled, and he cautioned against drawing conclusions from negative results. He ended his article in JAMA with a telling acknowledgement: “We entered the outbreak with a notion that we knew the cause of the disease, and were quite sure we knew how it was transmitted from person to person. Perhaps, if we have learned anything, it is that we are not quite sure what we know about the disease.""
The Taoists and Ayurvedic practitioners have known for thousands of years that illness comes from imbalances in Qi/ Prana/ the electric energetic flow of the organism in its environment. Causes include the presence of either deficiencies of nutrients—including proper nutrition, sunlight, and affection—or excesses of toxins and other pathogens—including negativity, fear, unresolved grief, heavy metals, parasites, and stuck anger which is not effectively transformed into positive action.
It seems to me that this ancient insight may be largely compatible with your view balancing a "cause" with the "terrain" of the individual exposed to it. And, while I remain a "virus skeptic" in the camp with the Doctors Bailey (Sam and Mark, New Zealand), Dr. Tom Cowan, Dr Stefan Lanka, and others, I very much appreciate your effort to shed light on the processes used. A respectful conversation among brilliant people like you and the likewise erudite "dissidents" would do worlds of good in moving humanity in the right direction.
I agree with you that attenuated viruses (vaccines) are a type of human experiment but not one set up to prove the cause and effect question, even if they sort of inadvertently address it when some kids end up with measles or chicken pox-like rashes after the vaccine. But no one is going to allow an experiment such as what we do in lab animals! (Thank goodness)
It should NEVER have been used to demand society shut down or that people receive unnecessary medical interventions. I don’t think there would be as many skeptics if we treated these data as guides when treating patients as opposed to justification for authoritarian mandates.
Well, then, what would they have used to destroy America? It was excellent dashboard fodder for the snews to count the people who died infected.
I don't mean to dismiss your article; it was very worthwhile. I am aware that there are a number of well-known (presumably well-educated and well-meaning) scientists who claim the existence of a virus- RNA plus protein coat if I may oversimplify- has been proven. It's hard to prove something does NOT exist and you have shown us that it is hard to prove something DOES exist. Thank you for your work.
Oh my. This was such an interesting read, including all the comments. An example for sure of how medical/bio research scientists have a multi-level complex vocabulary that indeed is hard to translate for public consumption. Since I spent 25 years in Germany, where there is more society-wide childhood vaccine skepticism, I, as a lay person, am familiar with the germ vs terrain discussion and see the wisdom of your insight that illness is most likely a mix of both. I also liked the comment from a TCM practitioner that in Chinese medicine "Fear is deemed a strong pathogen, which weakens the body's defenses." Fascinating, and something that is completely overlooked in 'Western' medical science. Thank you for sparking this discussion.
Thank you for your comment Susannah! I have been attempting to walk a fine line between Western medicine beliefs and a more holistic view of science...and I often end up pissing off both groups! I didn't know there was more skepticism in Germany than here on this topic. That's so interesting.
Not sure if you heard about this, but there was a recent effort to run a "control" experiment using the same process of isolating and culturing a non-infected sample and they found the same "viruses" that are in "infected" samples. The thing is, no virus has been properly run with a control of an uninfected sample before this time.
It would depend on what readout someone was measuring. There are quite a few papers where something is seen in a non-infected sample, especially with measurements like cell death or microscopic examination. You would have to really comb the methods of that paper just as you would the ones showing the presence only in infected samples. Especially with human data, you're relying on reported symptoms (plenty of people can test positive and have no symptoms) and you don't know where that person has been. I'll check out the link.
You gave a great explanation. But it ended with where all us skeptics end at. No proof - its a best guess. The fact remains a hundred plus years of ‘virology’ and no one can produce one. The idea they are far too long to actually isolate is based on….what? Since you haven’t isolated one. And the number isn’t in the trillions, what was it, 30,000? Prove it. That isn’t an outsize number. The problem is you BEGIN with the belief in viruses, you assume a virus is going around, and then you go to great lengths to determine which type it is based on past studies which began the same way. It blew me away how shaky viral science is. And the excuses are not valid. ‘Too long’. ‘Too small’! I have heard that one from doctors. Too small!!
I'm glad you stuck with me Mystic William and kept reading my substack! My ex (also a scientist) used to have a saying "you can't prove it won't happen" which we would laughingly apply to many scientific questions. It definitely applies to this topic. Also, we are never supposed to use words like "I believe" in scientific discourse, but sometimes that's what it comes down to.
Luc Montaignier (sp?) before he died was interviewed and said ‘it is true we never isolated the HIV virus’!!! He cast some doubts on his own Nobel prize winning theories.
AIDS - I worked with AIDS/HIV sufferers. I very much doubted the Virus idea after a few years of working with them. There was a simpler explanation. Semen contains within it an immune suppressing chemical. So that the sperm is not killed by the host (the fertile female). This ingredient remains within the vagina. In the case of a gay male having unprotected anal sex this compound is injected into the blood stream via anal fissures and tears. These guys were having sex 200+ times a year with a hundred different partners. Sometimes 500 times a year. They were creating this syndrome within themselves. Eventually having turned off their immune systems 1000s of times they had ruined their immune systems. It was a simple and obvious explanation. My gay male clients did not want to hear this. It made it seem they did it to themselves. Which they had. No virus was required.
Herpes could easily be a parasite. Which can pass skin to skin. As might be measles and chicken pox etc. Again no virus needed.
Colds and seasonal flus could easily be the body cleansing itself around a weather change. Your body accumulates fluids in the summer and needs to shed this as the cold damp winter sets in. You get a cold. A simple cleansing. Not a disease.
Until actual proof emerges, which seems really doubtful at this point as it hasn’t been found yet, the explanation you gave which was good to me proves nothing. It did explain why you think what you do. But I really think you should examine this from the idea you BEGIN with a belief in viruses. You further BEGIN your examination of a sick person with a predisposition ‘this person must have a virus. Now, let’s find it.’ That isn’t science.
Kary Mullis also said that you shouldn't use PCR for testing!
I think it was diagnosing.
Testing as a means of diagnosing, yes that's what he was talking about. Not testing in a lab setting to see if RNA was present.
Did you ever see the video of him saying, I paraphrase, that if you run enough cycles you can find about any molecule that exists? PCR testing was the perfect tool for tyrants. Thank you for your work.
Yes and anyone that has done PCR knows this. You always include a buffer control and sometimes it comes up positive.
You also inspired another topic for me. You ask how do we know that the genome is 30K if we can't see it? In a nutshell, the pieces of sequence that are compiled to get the entire genome have regions of overlap. Think of a jigsaw puzzle. The genes that encode proteins to which antibodies are made after infection are spread throughout the genome. You can cross check amino acid sequences with genetic sequences. So, you can take the agent coronavirus, or whatever you want to call it, and incubate cells for several days then grind up the cells and some of those proteins will be present. You can purify them and get the amino acid sequence and line that up with the DNA sequence that was derived from the RNA collected from the patient sample. And you can find antibodies to those same proteins in people who have been exposed to the agent. The spike protein is 3819 nucleotides long, which we know not just from the DNA sequence but from the protein sequence of the purified protein. So that DNA sequence is spliced together from multiple overlapping sequencing data but the amino acid sequence confirms the nucleotide sequence because the nucleotides encode the amino acids. The spliced together sequences also contain regions on either side of that gene that overlap with other sequences that overlap with nucleocapsid protein which is 1210 nucleotides and the same is true for several other proteins from the "agent we call sarscov2" that have been isolated and purified and amino acid sequenced. So, we have this internal cross-check of those sequences and they can be lined up by overlaps in the DNA sequences to amount to a 30Kb sequence. This isn't all made up out of thin air, but I think a separate article that explains that with pictures (because this is a very visual concept) will help clarify it.
All of your thoughts are good ones, but the thing that puzzles me about your skepticism is why it's directed only at viruses. Chicken pox/measles --they could be caused by a parasite. Ok. But that also hasn't been proven or shown. They sequences of those pathogens are also too long to sequence in a single go. They're microscopic. How do you know they are there? At some point, one has to remain open to possibilities and come up with theories based on the information we have. Your last paragraph is really astute-that IS the problem. And that's not how I would approach a question, just FYI. It's how COVID and other illnesses are approached. I would entertain far more possibilities, but consider a virus as one of them. My issue with your approach is you would consider many other microscopic possibilities but NOT a virus. It's almost the same thing as what you are objecting to, but in reverse. In other words, I fully agree with your assessment of the medical profession in that last paragraph. Except your assertion that it isn't science. What you framed is a hypothesis --"This person must have a virus." And looking for it is the correct scientific approach. It's just that the tools to prove it definitively are not available which means the conclusion should be that it is a likely contributing factor to consider not "It is THE Factor".
I fully understand a strong reaction to being told you HAVE to get a vaccine against a virus to protect others from it. The easiest way to counter that is to demand better proof the thing against which you are being vaccinated exists. But what you want to call the thing that is comprised of nucleic acid and protein isn't the issue, right? It's what is being done in the name of eradicating it that is so objectionable.
This is the best article I've read so far, engaging with the reasonable questions of "skeptics" from the perspective of good faith use of available techniques in search of possible pathogens. Bravo! I appreciate that you do this with a tone of respect, not the very common contempt with the tag-line "Stay in your lane!" so readily hurled at intelligent people sincerely researching to find truth.
I'm a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which has a very different approach to health and the challenges to it. Yes, there are pathogens--including toxins and stress. Fear is deemed a strong pathogen, which weakens the body's defenses. We've had no shortage of irrational and constant assaults of fear for the past several years.
I would like to mention a well-documented experiment in response to this statement: "It is obviously impractical to directly investigate viral transmission in humans because no one is going to approve an experiment in which you expose healthy individuals to a potential pathogen." This is exactly what has happened for decades in injecting healthy children with childhood vaccines known to cause myriad harms, ostensibly to protect against diseases, which had disappeared prior to the debut of the vaccines. Not a single CDC schedule vaccine has been tested against a true placebo. (See ICAN and the testimony of Attorney Aaron Siri.)
We've been relentlessly preached to in the Covid Era--hardly over and done with--that contagion is an unassailable truth. Illness may not, after all, be contagious. You do beautifully address the crucial element of "terrain" in determining responses to "germs." One thing is for certain: the debilitating fear that weakens defenses can be quite contagious.
The most thorough (though very unappetizing and borderline unethical) experiment attempting (and failing) to prove transmission of viral illness was done by Dr. Milton Rosenau in the Study of Influenza at Harvard University in 1918-1919. It's in the medical archives: https://www.ggarchives.com/
"The experiment began with 100 volunteers from the Navy who had no history of influenza. Rosenau was the first to report on the experiments conducted at Gallops Island in November and December 1918. His first volunteers received first one strain and then several strains of Pfeiffer bacillus by spray and swab into their noses and throats and then into their eyes.
...When that procedure failed to produce disease, others were inoculated with mixtures of other organisms isolated from the throats and noses of influenza patients. Next, some volunteers received injections of blood from influenza patients...Each volunteer was to shake hands with each patient, to talk with him at close range, and to permit him to cough directly into his face.
None of the volunteers in these experiments developed influenza. Rosenau was clearly puzzled, and he cautioned against drawing conclusions from negative results. He ended his article in JAMA with a telling acknowledgement: “We entered the outbreak with a notion that we knew the cause of the disease, and were quite sure we knew how it was transmitted from person to person. Perhaps, if we have learned anything, it is that we are not quite sure what we know about the disease.""
The Taoists and Ayurvedic practitioners have known for thousands of years that illness comes from imbalances in Qi/ Prana/ the electric energetic flow of the organism in its environment. Causes include the presence of either deficiencies of nutrients—including proper nutrition, sunlight, and affection—or excesses of toxins and other pathogens—including negativity, fear, unresolved grief, heavy metals, parasites, and stuck anger which is not effectively transformed into positive action.
It seems to me that this ancient insight may be largely compatible with your view balancing a "cause" with the "terrain" of the individual exposed to it. And, while I remain a "virus skeptic" in the camp with the Doctors Bailey (Sam and Mark, New Zealand), Dr. Tom Cowan, Dr Stefan Lanka, and others, I very much appreciate your effort to shed light on the processes used. A respectful conversation among brilliant people like you and the likewise erudite "dissidents" would do worlds of good in moving humanity in the right direction.
With much respect and gratitude, Suzanne
I agree with you that attenuated viruses (vaccines) are a type of human experiment but not one set up to prove the cause and effect question, even if they sort of inadvertently address it when some kids end up with measles or chicken pox-like rashes after the vaccine. But no one is going to allow an experiment such as what we do in lab animals! (Thank goodness)
It should NEVER have been used to demand society shut down or that people receive unnecessary medical interventions. I don’t think there would be as many skeptics if we treated these data as guides when treating patients as opposed to justification for authoritarian mandates.
Well, then, what would they have used to destroy America? It was excellent dashboard fodder for the snews to count the people who died infected.
I don't mean to dismiss your article; it was very worthwhile. I am aware that there are a number of well-known (presumably well-educated and well-meaning) scientists who claim the existence of a virus- RNA plus protein coat if I may oversimplify- has been proven. It's hard to prove something does NOT exist and you have shown us that it is hard to prove something DOES exist. Thank you for your work.
Oh my. This was such an interesting read, including all the comments. An example for sure of how medical/bio research scientists have a multi-level complex vocabulary that indeed is hard to translate for public consumption. Since I spent 25 years in Germany, where there is more society-wide childhood vaccine skepticism, I, as a lay person, am familiar with the germ vs terrain discussion and see the wisdom of your insight that illness is most likely a mix of both. I also liked the comment from a TCM practitioner that in Chinese medicine "Fear is deemed a strong pathogen, which weakens the body's defenses." Fascinating, and something that is completely overlooked in 'Western' medical science. Thank you for sparking this discussion.
Thank you for your comment Susannah! I have been attempting to walk a fine line between Western medicine beliefs and a more holistic view of science...and I often end up pissing off both groups! I didn't know there was more skepticism in Germany than here on this topic. That's so interesting.
@Kathryn Defea
Thank you for this interesting essay on attempting to convince a skeptic. Very entertaining.
Not sure if you heard about this, but there was a recent effort to run a "control" experiment using the same process of isolating and culturing a non-infected sample and they found the same "viruses" that are in "infected" samples. The thing is, no virus has been properly run with a control of an uninfected sample before this time.
It would depend on what readout someone was measuring. There are quite a few papers where something is seen in a non-infected sample, especially with measurements like cell death or microscopic examination. You would have to really comb the methods of that paper just as you would the ones showing the presence only in infected samples. Especially with human data, you're relying on reported symptoms (plenty of people can test positive and have no symptoms) and you don't know where that person has been. I'll check out the link.
Hi! Do you have a link to this? It sounds interesting. Thanks
https://rumble.com/v512nrn-the-most-important-project-of-the-century-the-end-of-virology-with-jamie-an.html
Is the video where I first saw this.
Thanks, Jimmy