Modern viral research is like Bigfoot hunting. Trackers of this legendary ape-like beast (also called Sasquatch and the Abominable Snowman) trot out the occasional questionable blurry photograph and footprint marks to claim proof of Bigfoot's existence. Based on this suspect data, they say the beast is up to ten feet tall and 440 pounds with 17-inch footprints that have even been made into plaster casts to prove its existence. [170] Virus hunters also collect dubious data, claiming to have images of the virus, even though electron micrographs of viruses accompanied by an analysis of their complete genetic material and virus shell are the only method of proving a virus's existence.
Bigfoot hunt, like viruses, are splendid moneymakers. Along a strip of California's Highway 101, numerous shops hawk Bigfoot-souvenirs [171] and they are popular with tourists even though it is generally accepted that Bigfoot is an invention. [172] Of course, Bigfoot is nowhere near as lucrative as the international virus industry's multi-billion dollar business.
We must stress here that electron microscopy is fundamental to virus identification. For a long time, establishing unequivocal proof of a virus meant seeing is believing, as is the case with bacteria and fungi. The one difference is that bacteria and fungi can be seen with a light microscope, whereas viruses are so tiny that only an electron microscope (first patented in 1931) enables detailed imaging to make them visible. But, first you have to identify exactly what you're looking at, so these particles (possible viruses) must exist in a pure or purified form, in order to be able to differentiate virus particles from virus-like ones. At the beginning of the 1950s, virologists agreed that this was necessary, since, under certain conditions, even healthy cells produce a whole range of particles that could look like so-called tumor viruses (oncoviruses). [173] [174]
The importance of this process was confirmed at an international meeting of the Pasteur Institute in 1972, [175] [176] and "endured in the early 1980s," according to Val Turner, a physician and member of the Perth Group, an Australian research team. [177]
"Viruses are not naked bits of RNA (or DNA) . They are particles with particular sizes and shapes and other identifying features, which are obliged to replicate at the behest of living cells. They won't multiply in dead meat like bacteria. So there you have it. This predicates experiments to prove particles are a virus and that hasn't changed in a thousand years and certainly not since the 90s."
Turner uses easy-to-grasp language to describe the science: "Think of it like a paternity suit in which DNA evidence will be used and the accused is HIV and the child is a human. The crux of the case is proof that the DNA you found in the human is the same DNA you found in the accused. For the latter, you have to have rock solid proof the DNA carne from the accused . Given that in cell cultures all sorts of particles appear, only some of which are viruses, you have to prove that (a) a particular particle is a virus; and (b) your DNA comes from that particle. How can you prove
(a) without using electron microscopy (for many reasons) and without purification?
You tell me.
Frankly we from the Perth Group do not understand this obsession with 'old data' or 'science moves on.' Has Archimedes' principle 'moved on'? Do solid objects no longer displace their own volume of liquids? (Archimedes' principle states that a body immersed in a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid. The principle applies to both floating and submerged bodies and to all fluids, i.e., liquids and gases) If everything has to be 'up to date' then in ten years nothing that is up to date now will be up to date then. Which means as long as time keeps going nothing will be right." [178] This goes for orthodox theories as well!
By soundly characterizing virus structure (virus purification), it is theoretically possible to irrefutably differentiate viruses themselves from virus-like particles. If this has taken place, the next step would be to get an electron micrograph of the purified virus (of course, proof that a virus exists does not automatically mean that this virus is also infectious, as had already been established in 1960, at a conference sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences). [179] But this procedure is rarely carried out in modern viral research. Viruses that purportedly threaten to wipe out humanity (H5N1, SARS virus, etc.) have evidently never been seen by anyone. [180] "Around 1960, before contemporary molecular biology arose, electron microscopy was held to be the best way of identifying viruses in cell cultures," writes pathology professor Etienne de Harven, a pioneer in electron microscopy and virology. De Harven's research career includes 25 years at the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York, a private cancer research center founded in 1945, which quickly advanced to become the largest of its kind in the USA. [181] "For this reason, laboratories all over the world directed their efforts at this time towards observing particles in cancer cells with ever-improved methods of electron microscopy." In 1962, the central role of electron microscopy was also recognized at the well-known Cold Spring Harbor Conference. Andre Lwoff, who would receive the Nobel Prize for medicine three years later, was among those who designated electron microscopy as likely the most efficient method of proving viruses' existence; he suggested investigating viruses with this procedure and dividing them into classes. [182]
A focus of medical science then (as now) was cancer. And because cancer researchers had the fixed idea that viruses were definitely cancer triggers, [183] they spent a lot of time proving the presence of viruses in human cancer cells, with the help of electron microscopy. But, these efforts were unsuccessful. "One only found virus-like particles from time to time-while viruses of a certain types could never convincingly be seen," reports de Harven. [184]
Virus hunters were, once again, crushed by this scientific news .. But the scientific world tends not to publicize negative results whenever possible-in scientific language, this is called, "publication bias." [185] Yet, whether the research claims promoted as evidence involve new patented drugs said to be superior to existing (cheaper) ones, or genetic markers of disease (interpreted as "risk" factors) , or statistical relationships, discerning whether the claims are spurious or confirmed by clinical trials can only be ascertained by making the full body of controlled studies publicly available.
In medicine, failure to do so casts doubt on the safety and efficacy of treatments as well as undermining the integrity of the scientific literature. Scientific journals are supposed to protect the integrity of science-but they don't. As is the case with most deficient practices in medical research and practice, there is an unacknowledged financial motive. And why are scientists coy about publishing negative data? "In some cases," says Scott Kern of Johns Hopkins University and editor of the recently founded online Journal of Negative Observations in Genetic Oncology, "withholding them keeps rivals doing studies that rest on an erroneous premise, thus clearing the field for the team that knows that, say, gene A doesn't really cause disease B. Which goes to show that in scientific journals, no less than in supermarket tabloids, you can't believe everything you read-or shouldn't." [186] [187]
As long ago as the 1960s the established science community was coy about publishing negative data, but the cancer virus hunters' failures were so universal that it was simply inevitable that one article or another should leak out into medical publications. In 1959, the researcher Hagenaus reported in the journal Etude du Cancer about the difficulties identifying any typical virus particles in a wide range of breast cancer samples. [188] And in 1964, the scientists Bernhard and Leplus were unsuccessful, even with electron microscopy's assistance, in finding virus particles presumed to play a role in the development of Hodgkin's lymphoma (lymphatic cancer) , lymphoid leukemia or metastases (tumors in various parts of the body). [189]
But these scientific studies didn't stop the virus hunters for a second. Instead of disengaging themselves from their virus tunnel vision, they grumbled about the methodology of virus determination: for example, over what are known as thin slices or thin-sections (tissue samples which are extremely precisely dissected and trimmed to size so they can be observed under the electron microscope). Thin-sections had proved effective countless times, and had also worked perfectly with mice. [190] But, the virus hunters needed a scapegoat and, instead of questioning the cancer-producing virus model, they started griping about the thin-sections. The production of the thin-sections was also thought to be too laborious and time-consuming. And who had the time for that once pharmaceutical companies began offering fast cash for quick fixes?
So, scientists turned to the much simpler and faster dye method, in which certain particles of the sample (for instance, DNA and RNA) were marked in color and then electron micrographed. But from a purely scientific perspective, the results of dye method are a disaster. Through the air-drying process that was necessary for the staining, the particles became totally deformed, so that they appeared as particles with long tails. They were full-blown artificial products of the laboratory, and they still looked exactly like so many other non-viral cellular components. This, logically, made it impossible to determine if a virus or a non-viral particle had been found . [191] [192] A few scientists did in fact acknowledge that the dye method was dubious. But, instead of admitting defeat and returning to the thin-sections method, they began bashing electron microscopy technology! Other researchers were in turn so anxiously preoccupied with finally finding cancer viruses that they casually overlooked the worthlessness of dye method results, and theorized that the "tailed" particles were a certain type of virus. As absurd as this may sound to logical thinkers, virus hunters were even remunerated with plenty of research money for this action.
As a result, even cow's milk and mother's milk were tested for the presence of "tailed" particles in the mad rush to prove that viruses could produce cancer. [193] One well-known molecular biologist Sol Spiegelman even warned against breastfeeding in October 1971, and his message made for numerous lurid media headlines. [194] These so-called scientists brushed aside the fact that, to date, not a single retrovirus has been able to be isolated from breast cancer tissue (and probably not from human tumor tissue or blood plasma in general). [195] Shortly thereafter, Spiegelman was quoted in Science saying, "one can't kick off fear mongering on this scale if one doesn't exactly know if a virus particle is the cause." [196]
But mainstream viral research drifted purposefully further away from the well established viral proof model. They latched on to Howard Temin's 1 97 and David Baltimore's198 description of activity of the enzyme reverse transcriptase in connection with cancer viruses in 1970. Their research seemed so significant to the medical establishment that the two were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1975. [199]
What was so significant about this enzyme, a substance that, as a sort of catalyst, makes it possible for biochemical reactions to occur? To understand this, we must remember that, in the 1960s, scientists thought they had established that a few viruses did not possess any DNA (complete genetic information) , but rather only RNA genes. This baffled the researchers since they believed viruses without any DNA (only with RNA) were not able to multiply. Until Temin and Baltimore delivered an explanation with the enzyme called reverse transcriptase. It, they said, can transform the RNA in RNA viruses (later called retroviruses because of this) into DNA, by which viruses are then able to multiply (if RNA exists alone, the conditions for replication are not met). [200]
But there was so much enthusiasm about the discovery of reverse transcriptase that virus hunters rashly assumed that reverse transcriptase was something very typical of retroviruses. They proclaimed something like this: if we observe reverse transcriptase activities in our test tubes (in vitro), then we can be sure that a retrovirus is present as well (even if the virus' existence has never been proven or reverse transcriptase's role hasn't been established, for instance, in the context of HIV). [201] Yet, it was presumed that the (indirectly detected) presence of reverse transcriptase was sufficient enough to prove the existence of a retrovirus, and even a viral infection of the tested cells in vitro.
This dogma would now become fixed in the minds of mainstream researchers and it opened the flood gates to allow indirect virus detection methods (known as surrogate markers) to take the place of direct detection procedures (virus purification and characterization as well as electron micrograph). [202]
So, in 1983, in a paper printed in Science, researcher Luc Montagnier of the Institute Pasteur in Paris, later celebrated as the discoverer of HN, asserted that his research team had found a new retrovirus (which would later be named HN). [203] This was claimed only after reverse transcriptase activity had been observed in the cell culture. But, once again, there was no scientific proof for this conclusion. Eleven years before, in 1972, Temin and Baltimore had stated, "reverse transcriptase is a property that is innate to all cells and is not restricted to retroviruses." [204] And even Franc;oise Barre-Sinoussi and Jean Claude Chermann, the most important co-authors of Montagnier's 1983 Science paper, concluded in 1973 that reverse transcriptase is not specific to retroviruses, but rather exists in all cells. [205] In other words, if the enzyme (the surrogate marker) reverse transcriptase is found in the laboratory cultures, one cannot conclude, as Luc Montagnier did, that a retroviruses, let alone a particular retrovirus has been found.
Reverse transcriptase is no longer the most significant surrogate marker, by a long shot. Now the virus hunters are fixated on antibody tests, PCR viral load tests, and helper cell counts. But these tests raise new questions, given their striking weaknesses (see Chapter 3, "HIV Antibody Tests, PCR Viral Load Tests, CD4 Counts: As Informative as a Toss of a Coin") . This prompted 14 renowned virologists of the "old guard" to direct an appeal to the young high-technology-focused generation of researchers, which was published in Science in 2001:
"Modem methods like PCR, with which small genetic sequences are multiplied and detected , are marvelous [but they] tell little or nothing about how a virus multiplies, which animals carry it, how it makes people sick. It is like trying to say whether somebody has bad breath by looking at his fingerprint." [206]
No less remarkable, in this context, is an early 2006 article in the German Medical Journal (Deutsches ii.rzteblatt) about a study by researchers who thought that, with the assistance of PCR, they had discovered new "exotic" bacteria. The article points out that, "only genetic traces of the pathogen are detected [with the PCR]. From this, it cannot automatically be concluded that complete bacteria exist as well." [207] [208]
The Virus Disaster of the 1970s and HIV as Salvation in the 1980s
Among the overall virus mania, such critical thoughts founder quickly. In the 70s, elite researchers were simply too busy channeling generous government aid into researching the possible connection between viruses and cancer. On 23 December 1971 , US President Richard Nixon declared the "War on Cancer" at the behest of the medical establishment, and, with this metaphor, carried the militant tradition of the monocausal medical doctrine to the extreme, attached to the conception of viruses as the enemy. We had now become accustomed to talking about the "weapons," the "strategies," and the "arsenals" of cell-killing preparations and weren't even taken aback when powerful people like Nixon called the new cancer war "a Christmas present for the people." [209]
To date, many hundred millions of dollars of research funds have been poured into this war (a good part of it paid by taxes)-and the results are staggering. [210] Back in 1971, a cure for cancer and a preventive vaccine were promised by 1976-but both of these are still nowhere in sight. [211] Incidentally, in the tradition of celebratory medicine, along with a trust that the public conscience and the media have short-term memory, the medical establishment rarely feels a need to keep its promises. "I am convinced that in the next decade or maybe later, we will have a medication that is just as effective against cancer . . . as penicillin against bacterial infections," boasted Cornelius "Dusty" Rhoads as early as 1953. He had been leader of the US Army's Department for Chemical Warfare (medical division of the US Chemical Warfare branch) during the Second World War, and was director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, founded in 1945. [212]
Death rates have meantime increased exponentially alongside skyrocketing research expenditures. 2 13 Today in Germany, 220,000 people die annually from cancer; in the USA, it is almost 600,000. Even taking the aging of these populations into consideration, these numbers are staggering. For this reason, experts like George Miklos, one of the most renowned geneticists worldwide, criticized mainstream cancer research in Nature Biotechnology as "fundamentally flawed" and equated it with "voodoo science." [214]
By the late 1970s, medical experts lobbed damning critiques against mainstream cancer research. Medical scientists "had credited the retroviruses with every nasty thing-above all the triggering of cancer-and have to accept constant mockery and countless defeats," Der Spiegel pointed out in 1986. [215]
And the concept that viruses are the great trigger factors failed with other diseases, besides cancer. One notorious example is the swine flu disaster of 1976. During a march, David Lewis, a young American recruit, collapsed . Epidemic experts swooped in with their "magic wand" of clustering in their hands and claimed that they had isolated a swine flu virus from his lung. At the behest of the medical establishment, and particularly the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) , US President Gerald Ford appeared on TV and urged all Americans to get vaccinated against an imminent deadly swine flu epidemic. [216] Just like today's avian flu fear mongers, Ford used the great Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 to scare the public into action.
Approximately 50 million US citizens rushed to local health centers for injections of a substance hastily thrown on the market. It produced strong side effects in 20% to 40% of recipients, including paralysis and even death. Consequent damage claims climbed to $2.7 billion. In the end, CDC director David Spencer, who had even set up a swine flu "war room" to bolster public and media support, lost his job. The ultimate bitter irony was that there were no, or only very isolated reports of swine flu. [217]
Consequently, at the end of the 1970s the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) came into unsettled political waters-just like the CDC, which was extensively restructured at the beginning of the 1980s. As a result, at the CDC and NIH, the most powerful organizations related to health politics and biomedical science, the great contemplation began. To redeem themselves, a new "war" would, of course, be the best thing.
Despite perpetual setbacks, an "infectious disease" remained the most effective way to catch public attention and open government pockets. In fact, Red Cross officer Paul Cumming told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1994 that "the CDC increasingly needed a major epidemic" at the beginning of the 80s "to justify its existence. " [218] And the HIV/AIDS theory was a salvation for American epidemic authorities.
"All the old virus hunters from the National Cancer Institute put new signs on their doors and became AIDS researchers. [US President Ronald] Reagan sent up about a billion dollars just for starters," according to Kary Mullis, Nobel laureate for Chemistry. "And suddenly everybody who could claim to be any kind of medical scientist and who hadn't had anything much to do lately was fully employed. They still are." [219]
Among those who jumped over from cancer research to AIDS research, the best known is Robert Gallo. Along with Montagnier, Gallo is considered to be the discoverer of the "AIDS virus," enjoys worldwide fame, and has become a millionaire. In his previous life as a cancer researcher, on the other hand, he had almost lost his reputation, after his viral hypotheses on diseases like leukemia imploded. [220] "HIV didn't suddenly pop out of the rain forest or Haiti," writes Mullis. "It just popped into Bob Gallo's hands at a time when he needed a new career." [221]
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