The Virus™ Paradigm: Assumptions, Lies, and the Foundation of Modern Medicine

On Virus™ Isolation

“Truths” can be built on lies, on assumptions.

If something is assumed to be true, then all that follows that assumption will have a beautiful internal symmetry, a truth, or at least something passing as truth. Something that feels like truth.

But if the original assumption is a lie, then clearly all that follows is poisoned by that lie, thus a lie.

Our world has been constructed on three assumptions:

1. There is such a thing as a virus.

2. This virus causes disease.

3. You, personally, can contaminate others with this disease-causing particle.

The first claim is the most important claim, because the next two rely on it.

So, said another way, this first claim is the most important claim in the world today, as our whole word is constructed based on the truth of this claim.

I cannot think of anything more important than testing the veracity of this claim. It requires more rigorous scrutiny than any other single claim in the world. Even more so than the “CO2 causing climate change” claim.

From this single claim follows:

• Vaccination.

• Social distancing.

• Masks.

• Lockdowns.

• Quarantine camps.

• Travel restrictions.

• Anti-virals.

• Pandemics.

• Pandemic preparation.

• Pandemic treaties.

To name but a few of the necessities and “truths” that follow this single assumption.

I am now firmly of the view that viruses are a 100-year construct of the ruling oligarchy.

Mark Gober, in An End to Upside Down Medicine, has written, in chapter 2, what I think is the single best summation of the foundational untruths and lies of the Virus™ story.

I am publishing the chapter here in full, as summarizing it simply doesn’t do it justice.

I strongly recommend buying the book, sharing it with others and supporting Gober’s work.

With thanks to Mark Gober.

An End to Upside Down Medicine (Thriftbooks)

An End to Upside Down Medicine (Amazon)

Related Posts on Viruses and Virology

1. Virus

2. Virology

3. Measles “Virus”

4. Settling the Virus Debate

5. A Farewell to Virology (Expert Edition)

6. Ebola™

7. HIV - a virus like no other

8. Quarantine Camps

9. Viruses, Lies, and Disaster Capitalism: The Engine of Modern Control

10. The Common Cold Unit

Deep Dive Conversation Library (Bonus for Paid Subscribers)

This deep dive is based on the book’s contents.

Discussion No.17: 20 essential insights into virus isolation

Thank you for your support.

Analogy

Imagine you're a detective investigating a series of robberies in a small town. The police chief tells everyone that there's an invisible burglar who can pass through walls, doesn't leave fingerprints, and somehow gets into people's homes to steal their valuables. When you ask for evidence, they show you:

1. Pictures of empty rooms where items are missing

2. Videos of doors mysteriously opening (but no burglar visible)

3. Computer simulations of what the burglar might look like

4. Reports of multiple homes being robbed in the same neighborhood

When you ask to see actual proof of the burglar - like security camera footage, fingerprints, or physical evidence - they tell you "Well, the burglar is invisible, so of course we can't show you that. But look at all these robbed houses! What else could it be?"

You point out that there could be other explanations: faulty locks, insider theft, people misplacing items, or even multiple different thieves. You also note that without actually catching or seeing the burglar, they can't be certain their "invisible burglar theory" is correct. When you ask them to do a controlled study - like setting up a house with proper surveillance and controls to catch this invisible burglar in action - they say it's impossible because "the burglar is too sneaky to be caught that way."

This is similar to what the No Virus position argues about virology: despite all the indirect evidence and explanations offered, they contend that no one has ever properly isolated and proven the existence of viruses using proper scientific methods. Just as it would be unscientific to conclude that an invisible burglar exists without direct evidence, they argue it's unscientific to conclude viruses exist without proper isolation and controlled experiments. And just as there might be other explanations for missing valuables, there might be other explanations for why people get sick.

The analogy illustrates the chapter's central point: that a lack of direct, properly controlled scientific evidence shouldn't be dismissed just because there's a popular theory that seems to explain the observations.

12-point summary

1. Historical Context & Basic Debate: The chapter discusses a fundamental divide in scientific thought regarding viruses, centered around a minority position called the "No Virus" theory. This perspective argues that while researchers conduct experiments and take microscope images they claim show viruses, they have never actually isolated and purified a virus according to proper scientific standards. This position doesn't deny that people get sick, but rather challenges the mainstream explanation that viruses are the cause of certain diseases.

2. Evolution of Virus Definition: The modern definition of a virus has changed significantly over time. Initially, the term "virus" meant "poison" in ancient times. The current definition describes viruses as replicating, protein-coated pieces of genetic material that can infect living tissues, replicate inside them, and cause disease. The No Virus position argues that this current definition has never been properly proven through scientific methodology.

3. Criticism of Standard Methods: A central criticism focuses on the "gold standard" method of virus isolation, established by Enders and Peebles in 1954. This method involves mixing patient samples with various substances including antibiotics, animal serums, and kidney cells. When cells break down in this mixture, virologists interpret this as evidence of a virus. However, critics argue this cell breakdown could be caused by the experimental conditions themselves rather than a virus.

4. Methodological Concerns: The No Virus position identifies two major methodological problems in virology: first, viruses are never physically isolated (separated from all other materials) in experiments, meaning there's no true independent variable being tested. Second, studies lack proper scientific controls. Without these elements, they argue that virology fails to follow the basic scientific method.

5. Microscopy Critique: Questions about electron microscope images form another key critique. The No Virus camp argues that these images are problematic because they're static snapshots of dead, chemically treated material taken outside the body. They contend that researchers can't prove these particles are actually viruses rather than normal cellular components, especially since the sample preparation process can alter the material being observed.

6. Control Experiment Evidence: A significant piece of evidence comes from German virologist Dr. Stefan Lanka's control experiments in 2021. He demonstrated that the cell breakdown typically attributed to viruses in laboratory experiments could be reproduced without adding any patient samples, suggesting the experimental method itself might be causing the effects rather than any virus.

7. FOI Request Findings: The chapter highlights numerous Freedom of Information (FOI) requests led by Christine Massey, who has received responses from 216 institutions in 40 countries. None could provide records showing the isolation of SARS-CoV-2 or other viruses from human samples. Notably, the CDC responded that the standard definition of isolation is "outside of what is possible in virology."

8. Genetic Sequencing Challenge: Regarding genetic sequencing, the No Virus position argues that without first isolating a virus, it's impossible to know if the genetic material being sequenced actually comes from a virus. They contend that modern sequencing involves assembling genetic fragments of unknown origin into computer models, rather than sequencing actual isolated viral particles.

9. Legal Precedents: The chapter discusses two significant legal victories in German courts supporting the No Virus position. In one case, Dr. Lanka won a challenge over proving measles virus existence, and in another, Marvin Haberland successfully challenged COVID-19 restrictions by arguing that virology doesn't follow proper scientific methodology.

10. Scientific Community Context: The No Virus position doesn't necessarily imply that scientists are deliberately deceiving people. Rather, it suggests that fundamental methodological problems have been baked into virology since its inception, and most scientists either haven't questioned these foundations or are afraid to challenge established beliefs.

11. Alternative Disease Explanations: Regarding alternative explanations for illness, the chapter suggests that people can get sick from various factors including environmental toxins, nutritional deficiencies, electromagnetic fields, radiation exposure, and psychological factors. It argues that clusters of illness don't necessarily prove the existence of contagious viruses.

12. Public Health Implications: The chapter concludes by noting that the implications of this debate are massive for public health policy. If the No Virus position is correct, it would mean that many pandemic control measures (lockdowns, masks, vaccines) were based on a fundamentally flawed understanding of disease transmission. A group of twenty doctors and scientists have proposed specific protocols to settle the debate, but as of the writing, no virology labs had taken up this challenge.

The End of Upside Down Medicine

CHAPTER 2 - VIRUS ISOLATION

[Note: I have left the footnote refences in the text, so you can see how well refenced this chapter is, but to access the footnotes, please buy the book.]

In the previous chapter, the HIV/AIDS crisis was presented as a struggle between two battling perspectives: one that believed the mainstream narrative claiming “HIV causes AIDS,” and the other that disagreed. This is a relatively well-known split. However, what is less-often discussed is a divide within the crowd of dissenters. Among those who believed that HIV does not cause AIDS, a small minority argued that HIV does not exist. In other words, this minority acknowledged that the researchers who claimed to have discovered HIV were indeed mixing things in test tubes and taking pictures of what appeared under microscopes. But in all of that work, they never found an isolated, purified virus. Rather, they were working with a “soup” of cellular material that they simply assumed contained the virus within it. Going forward, I will refer to those who espouse this perspective as the “No Virus” camp.

The Perth Group in Australia conducted extensive analyses on this matter and even published peer-reviewed papers. The group also produced a detailed (and lengthy) scientific paper that critiques the foundational HIV studies, titled “HIV—a virus like no other” (it is available for free at http://www.theperthgroup.com/). Neville Hodgkinson, formerly a medical and science correspondent of the London Daily Mail and the Sunday Times, has published many articles about the Perth Group’s work, including a summary of its six key assertions.1

Additionally, a German virologist named Stefan Lanka was vocal about the No Virus position during the HIV/AIDS era and continues to be today.2 In a 2021 interview, Dr. Lanka comments:

What I saw in both papers—of [Drs.] Gallo and Montagnier—…they claim[ed] a virus, but they never saw a virus….[In their work], only an enzymatic activity [indicated to them] that there should be a virus somewhere else around….As the cells [in the experiments] were dying, they [thought] that…at least some of the materials…are viral. It’s their secret how they could choose some of them and say, “Look, those are the viral proteins,” using the antibody test….When I realized that there is a virus in the title [of the paper] but no virus structure inside, I thought I [must] have over[looked] something. Or medical doctors are keeping their real isolation protocol secret….I was not speaking with anybody on this because I was afraid [of] losing my lab.3

He then started looking into other viruses, not just HIV, and the same methodological problems were there. He’s been open about his critiques of the field of virology ever since.4

Nancy Turner Banks, MD, a Harvard-trained doctor, was also explicit in her book AIDS, Opium, Diamonds, and Empire (2010), arguing that Dr. Robert Gallo only described “indirect surrogate markers” in his HIV work in the early 1980s.5 She further explained that isolation of the virus was “never done” by Dr. Gallo or Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier. Dr. Banks cites a 1997 interview in which Dr. Montagnier admitted that in his 1983 experiment, “we saw some particles, but they did not have the morphology typical of retroviruses….I repeat, we did not purify.”6 The magnitude of this statement should not be underestimated. [emphasis added]

However, Dr. Peter Duesberg—perhaps the most famous of the HIV-causes-AIDS dissenters—strongly disagreed with the No Virus view. He called the divide over the existence of the virus “tragic.”7 Henry Bauer, a professor emeritus of chemistry and science studies at Virginia Tech, addressed this issue in the foreword he wrote to the 2014 edition of Joan Shenton’s book Positively False: Exposing the Myths Around HIV and AIDS. He wrote: “Since [the] distraction has become an open, unpleasant, regrettable schism, it would nowadays warrant extended and explicit analysis.”8 [emphasis added]

Dr. Bauer foreshadowed what happened with SARS-CoV-2 beginning in 2020 and continues today in 2023 as I am writing this book. The same arguments that were made to refute the existence of HIV are being made about the methods used to isolate and purify SARS-CoV-2…and every other virus claimed to exist. Yes, you read that correctly. They say that viruses do not exist. (Note: In case you’re wondering, the No Virus position does not deny the existence of bacteria. However, as will be discussed in chapter 3, the No Virus position views bacteria as part of the body’s internal cleanup crew rather than pathogenic instigators.)

Also, to be clear, the No Virus camp isn’t denying that people get sick. Rather, the claim is that people get sick for a multitude of reasons other than alleged intracellular parasites known as “viruses.” Yet, the allopathic model is often so focused on germs that it misses important factors that impact health.

This may be causing significant confusion and disbelief in your mind.

But consider, for example, that New Zealand’s Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR)—which claims to have isolated SARS-CoV-2 and sequenced its genome—responded on July 19, 2022, to an Official Information Act request with the following statement: “ESR has not performed any experiments to scientifically prove the existence of SARS-CoV-2 virus and therefore not [sic] provide you with any records.”9 The request had asked for “all records in the possession, custody, or control of the ESR that scientifically proves the existence of SARS-CoV-2” (and went on to clarify that the experiments should follow the scientific method, demonstrate repeatability, and use proper controls).10

Whether the virus causes the COVID-19 illness was also questioned in a separate request. On August 17, 2022, New Zealand’s ESR responded as follows: “ESR has not performed any experiments to scientifically prove that [the] SARS-CoV-2 virus causes COVID-19 and therefore not [sic] provide you with any records.”11 The request had asked for “all records in the possession, custody, or control of the ESR that scientifically proves SARS-CoV-2 virus causes COVID-19 disease” (and went on to clarify that the experiments should follow the scientific method, demonstrate repeatability, and use proper controls).12

But it’s not just New Zealand.

The CDC’s November 2, 2020, response to a request for “all records in the possession, custody or control of the CDC describing the isolation of the SARS-COV-2 virus” was met with the following response: “A search of our records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request.”13

This is just a snapshot of more than 200 organizations in forty countries that have failed to provide evidence along similar lines. And the No Virus position has had favorable rulings in German courts (more on these topics later in this chapter). [all emphasis in the quotes above were added]

So what does the No Virus group think has been happening over the past several years with COVID-19?14 This relates to a deeper question about which allopathic medicine often lacks an understanding: Why do people get sick?15 Answering that question is a distinct exercise from determining whether SARS-CoV-2 exists in the first place (and second, if it does exist, whether it causes disease). The No Virus argument is more focused on the question of the existence of the virus itself. Having a definitive alternative explanation for disease is not required to refute the existence of SARS-CoV-2.

However, since you, the reader, are likely wondering what’s going on, what follows is a set of possibilities—as an exercise in critical thinking—but nothing definitive. It’s important to first repeat something basic in an effort to alleviate inevitable psychological hurdles: people in the same place, around the same time, can get sick with similar symptoms because of many factors that have nothing to do with viruses. Put another way, it can’t be assumed that a contagious virus is what causes illness simply because people went to a party and a lot of them got sick. For instance, in chapter 1, I discussed a number of possibilities with regard to the symptoms associated with the label “HIV/AIDS”—people got sick because of toxicity, drug use, unhealthy lifestyles, harmful medications, malnutrition, and more.

There are countless factors that can contribute to illness, more generally. In the modern world, we’re bombarded with a sea of toxic substances in our food, water, air, medicines, homes, buildings, clothing fabrics, cosmetic products, sunscreens, deodorants, kitchen appliances, plastic containers, furniture, detergents, masks, motor fuel, metal can linings, soaps and shampoos, perfumes and colognes, air fresheners, insect repellents, toys, baby powders, dental procedures, and more.16 Certain locations might result in more exposure to these toxins than others, thereby causing concentrations of illness—and very specific symptoms—that have nothing to do with germs. Seasonality can also play into illness, as there are changes in humidity, temperature, barometric pressure, and exposure to sunlight. Electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) are everywhere in the wireless era and are especially prevalent in certain places;17 and electricity itself has become more widespread in our world, which might be more harmful than is often acknowledged.18 Radiation exposure can cause people in the same location to get sick—which is what happened after the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in 1986.

In fact, governments have a history of experimenting on their own people (such as the openly acknowledged MK-ULTRA mind-control program).19 Colin Ross, MD, gives a relevant example of unethical experimentation in his book The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists (2006): “Clouds of radioactive material were released into the atmosphere and tracked as they moved downwind, often through populated areas” from 1948 to 1952 in Utah, Tennessee, New Mexico, and the state of Washington. Ross also references an initiative called GREEN RUN, which involved the release of radioactive iodine-131 in Washington, and the cloud “contained hundreds and perhaps thousands as times [sic] as much radiation as was released accidentally at Three Mile Island in 1979.”20 Along similar lines, Joe Biden’s administration spoke openly in 2022 about considering “geoengineering” to block the sun because of “climate change.” The Daily Beast notes: “This is a technique that essentially involves spraying fine aerosols into the atmosphere.”21 Unacknowledged radiation and/or toxic aerosols could cause people in the same place to get sick with similar symptoms around the same time—not a virus. This needs to be considered within a comprehensive and open-minded analysis.

Also, nutritional deficiencies can cause symptoms of severe illness that can be mistaken for contagion. Consider scurvy, a deadly condition that killed more than 2 million sailors at sea starting in the Christopher Columbus era.22 Scurvy can cause exhaustion, the loss of teeth, ulcerations on the gums, spontaneous bleeding, limb pain, swelling, and anemia.23 There were many sailors in the same place at the same time who got sick—with similar, specific symptoms—and died. The problem was solved when sailors started consuming foods with vitamin C. They weren’t all sick, in the same place and at the same time, because of a contagious virus—all they needed to do was eat some lemons. Similarly, beriberi—a condition that affects the nerves, heart, digestion, and limbs—is now known to be caused by a deficiency of thiamine (vitamin B1)—not a contagious virus.24 Another one is pellagra, a condition that causes skin lesions and neurological and gastrointestinal disturbances. It is now known to result from a deficiency in niacin (vitamin B3), not a contagious virus.25

Furthermore, an analysis of COVID-19, specifically, is complicated by the fact that multiple doses of a vaccine were introduced into the global population. This needs to be considered as a possible contributor to illness, as the vaccine’s toxicity—in the short and long term—is not fully understood (more on this later). Most people don’t even know the ingredients of the fluid that was injected into their body, let alone what the impacts on their health might be. And the analysis is even more muddled because of data problems arising from false-positive test results.26 Also, some deaths were attributed to COVID-19 when the real cause of death was something else, and yet a COVID-19-positive test led to a “COVID-19-death” classification.27 So it’s difficult to ascertain accurate data about what actually happened.

Psychological factors, such as mass fear on a global scale, have also been significant, and might negatively affect health. This will become more pertinent later in the book when consciousness is discussed. Consider, as well, that female roommates’ menstrual cycles sometimes synchronize, and that’s not because of a contagious germ.28 Might there even be an invisible resonance between people that mimics germ-based contagion but is not understood by modern science?

Additionally, there are often cases in which some people in the same place have gotten sick with “COVID-19” symptoms, and yet others didn’t. If it’s so contagious, shouldn’t every single person get sick? These anomalies are not well explained beyond unproven theories or wild guesses. Such anomalies cannot be swept under the rug, but often they are.

Ultimately, there are so many considerations and possibilities—some of which people have thought of, and others that are perhaps beyond our current understanding of science and medicine. Scientists only know what 4 percent of the universe is made out of, and the rest—96 percent of the universe—is considered to be “dark matter” and “dark energy.” The true answer as to why people have gotten sick during the COVID-19 era—in contrast to reductionistic, allopathic thinking—might be multifactorial.29

So, the No Virus position doesn’t purport to know exactly why the symptoms associated with COVID-19 emerged when they did—but—to repeat—not having a definitive explanation for symptoms doesn’t prove that it was a virus. “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer sometimes, albeit unsatisfying. And it’s better than getting stuck in an incorrect belief.

However, the No Virus position is about much more than SARS-CoV-2. And it’s about much more than HIV/AIDS. It is about challenging a scientific paradigm that is fundamental to allopathic medicine.

The No Virus position further argues that flawed methodologies have been used by virologists since the inception of the field. That’s why they claim that no virus has been shown to exist. For example, scientists claimed that viruses caused disease well before the technology existed that could see something so tiny. They just assumed that viruses were there. Also, the term virus used to mean “poison.”30

From the No Virus perspective, the belief in disease-causing viruses is thus still a hypothesis—not an established scientific “theory.” Therefore, the onus is on the modern scientific establishment to back up its claim that viruses exist and cause disease. It’s as if scientists got ahead of themselves and ran with a belief system that’s supposed to be accepted as fact, when in reality, the basics still need to be validated using the scientific method.

Additionally, the No Virus position does not intend to imply that the majority of hardworking scientists and doctors are willfully conspiring and lying—although it doesn’t deny that some of them are intentionally bad actors. But this exercise is not about pointing fingers at individuals or trying to guess what their intentions are. In fact, the majority of well-meaning scientists and doctors are likely overlooking fundamental problems that are baked into the foundations of virology. Either they haven’t thought to question what they were taught, or they’re too afraid to challenge the establishment’s positions because the implications would be too devastating for the entire field. And it could be devastating to their own careers to speak out against the establishment’s positions. Therefore, it’s easier to “go along to get along.”

If it seems too difficult to believe that something so important could fool so many smart people, just think of the many Ponzi schemes that have successfully defrauded otherwise savvy investors.

The No Virus position also acknowledges that scientists in virology labs are doing research—and it’s true that they’re working with toxic substances—whether they label their work “gain of function,”31 “bioweapons research,” or something else. However, the exact nature of the microscopic stuff in the test tubes they’re mixing might be different from what we’re told. And scientists are certainly seeing something under a microscope—but seeing something under a microscope doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a virus.

As COVID-19 has persisted, this debate has been heating up. Drs. Thomas Cowan, Andrew Kaufman, Samantha Bailey, Mark Bailey, and many others have been vocally criticizing virology and its methods, and they have amassed large followings as more people ask questions about the prevailing narrative. Dr. Mark Bailey’s “A Farewell to Virology” (published in September 2022 and available for free at https://drsambailey.com/a-farewell-to-virology-expert-edition/) is a seminal, technical piece that critiques the foundational virology studies claiming to have isolated SARS-CoV-2 (and other viruses). Additionally, in mid-2023, a 150-plus-hour online library of videos that discuss the No Virus position, and additional topics, was launched by Alec Zeck, Mike Winner, and others. It is titled “The End of COVID” (available at https://theendofcovid.com/). It had more than 100,000 sign-ups in the first several weeks of its launch.32 Dr. Samantha Bailey—who was formerly a health presenter on New Zealand national television—has also posted many videos that explain the No Virus perspective in an easy-to-understand manner (they are available for free at https://drsambailey.com/resources/). Mike Stone’s https://ViroLIEgy.com also covers these topics in detail. And even prior to COVID-19, related concepts were presented in the comprehensive books Virus Mania (originally published in 2007 and updated in 2021) by Torsten Engelbrecht and his colleagues; and What Really Makes You Ill? (2019) by Dawn Lester and David Parker.

The point is, the No Virus movement is strong, and it’s growing. It is also causing an acrimonious divide among members of the “health-freedom community” who otherwise vigorously challenge the allopathic model of medicine. The No Virus position “goes too far” for the majority of them, but their rebuttals often suggest that they haven’t studied the rationale for the position. That is, many of them aren’t even aware of what the No Virus position is truly claiming, or why.33

Since this is such a fundamental issue for science and medicine, it does indeed need to be addressed with an “extended and explicit analysis” (to use Dr. Bauer’s prophetic words following the HIV-AIDS debates). The allopathic model and the massive industries surrounding it are heavily dependent on the belief in disease-causing viruses, and the No Virus position challenges its core. In fact, tyrannical “pandemic measures” are made possible by the belief in a microscopic, deadly, contagious virus.

Moreover, the nature of the No Virus arguments—and the analytical processes involved—have caused members of the No Virus community to rethink presuppositions about fields beyond virology, including the nature of the cell, the atom, DNA, and other related topics (many of which are being explored by researchers such as Dr. Cowan but are beyond the scope of this book).34 Thus, this exercise is ultimately even more important than just reexamining virology and allopathic medicine; it’s a way of approaching all scientific questions in a logical and scientific manner.

As a society, we need to get this right—one way or the other.

Therefore, what follows in this chapter is an attempt to characterize the No Virus position as it has been presented by its proponents—so that you, the reader, will at least know what the arguments are, regardless of whether they are deemed to be compelling. This chapter presents a mere synopsis of the key issues, and additional resources are provided in the endnotes and bibliography.

The “best case” scenario appears to be that virology has conducted sloppy “science” in many cases. The “worst case” scenario is that the entire field of virology is a house of cards.

The Basics of the No Virus Argument

The debate about the existence of viruses leads to an examination of inherently technical subjects. The matter simply cannot be resolved without looking at the virology studies themselves. More specifically, the matter cannot be resolved without reading the methods section of the foundational studies. This is a critical distinction, because sometimes a paper’s stated conclusion is not aligned with what actually happened in the study. If a paper says, “We isolated the virus” in its title, do we know for sure that this is actually the case?

Although virology studies are filled with technical jargon, the principles to examine are actually quite basic. To simplify, the two primary methodological problems that No Virus advocates typically raise are as follows:

1.Viruses are not physically isolated in virology experiments, which means that viruses cannot be known to exist. In fact, virology experiments lack an independent variable and are thus not designed to be capable of scientifically studying a virus.35

2.Virology studies lack proper controls.

The failure to properly do these two things demonstrates that the field of virology does not follow the scientific method, thereby rendering it one of “pseudoscience.”36 That is the No Virus position.

On the first point—isolation—Merriam-Webster defines the word as follows: “to set apart from others.”37 Dr. Cowan often gives a basic example: if someone has a toolkit with a hammer, a screwdriver, nails, and other tools, the process of isolating the hammer would be to take the hammer out of the toolkit and separate it from the other tools. Sometimes the word purify is used interchangeably with isolate in virology (although the definitions can become points of contention depending on how the terms are used). Nobel laureate Dr. Luc Montagnier expressed how important the isolation/purification step is when he said that its purpose is “to make sure you have a real virus.”38 [emphasis added]

In studies that seek to determine whether a virus makes people sick, a scientist would want to isolate the virus and then introduce it into living systems. That way, a scientist would be able to determine the effect the virus is having. Pictures of the virus could then be taken with an electron microscope to confirm a purified specimen, and analyses could then be run on the virus’s biochemical composition. A virus—by itself—must be isolated first (as is done with bacteria).

In such a study, the virus would be known as the “independent variable”—the thing that is being tested. The hypothesis of the study might be, for instance, that when an isolated virus is introduced into a group of cells, it damages them. In order to test that hypothesis—and this is the critical point—the scientists would need to establish that only the virus is being introduced and not other cellular debris, organisms, and so forth. If things other than the virus are introduced into the experiment, how would experimenters know if the virus, specifically, is causing the effect? More fundamentally, how would they even know that the virus exists if they haven’t isolated it first? And furthermore, if they haven’t found the virus first, how would they know if, say, the feared SARS-CoV-2 “spike protein” comes from a virus, or whether the genetic material found comes from a virus?

Think of it another way. Imagine that Jill drinks a green juice every day; and it’s made from a combination of celery juice, kale juice, apple juice, and lemon juice. Every time she drinks it, she gets an upset stomach. In order to find out what is causing her upset stomach, what should she do?

She decides to run an experiment. She drinks each of the ingredients individually to determine if one of them causes her to get an upset stomach. She does so, and sure enough, when she drinks plain kale juice—with no other juices mixed in—she gets an upset stomach. The other juices don’t cause any problems. In this process, she isolated the kale juice.

The No Virus position is that this isolation process is not properly done in virology studies—using the common definition of isolation. Therefore, a virus is assumed to exist, but it is never identified on its own, and thus it cannot be known to exist with certainty. So the kale-juice example wasn’t a perfect analogy. In that case, kale juice was identified as a separate entity that could be isolated, whereas in virology experiments, the hypothesized virus isn’t actually isolated—it’s just assumed to be there.

Most people, including doctors, have no idea that this is an issue because they’ve never evaluated virology studies themselves, so they assume virologists are doing their jobs properly.

The second core assertion of the No Virus position is that virology studies lack proper controls. This is, by definition, the case because without first having an independent variable, proper controls cannot be conducted.39

Consider the following hypothetical situation: Joe gets sick every time he drinks milk. That’s the only thing he tells his doctor, so the doctor concludes: I know what’s happening. Joe has a milk allergy.

Why is this observation—by itself—not sufficient to form the conclusion that the milk is causing Joe’s sickness? Maybe any drink would cause Joe to get sick (because, perhaps, he has a problem in his digestive tract). The doctor could run a simple control experiment, whereby he tells Joe to drink a more inert substance, such as water. If Joe gets sick after drinking milk and not water, that would be a greater indicator that milk is the cause.

But that’s not enough. What if an invisible, toxic chemical on the glass was causing Joe’s sickness? In that case, maybe milk wouldn’t have anything to do with Joe’s sickness. The doctor could then tell Joe to drink milk from different glasses and instruct him to do the same with water. And he could also suggest to Joe that he should drink different brands of milk, in case his sickness was caused by one brand in particular.

But even that’s not enough. The doctor might wonder if the location in which Joe drank the milk had high levels of environmental toxins, mold, and/or radiation. So he could instruct Joe to drink milk in an entirely different location.

Then he could ask Joe to drink milk at different times of the day, in case something about his body clock makes him more or less sensitive at different times. He might also wonder if Joe should try drinking milk before, during, and after meals—maybe the timing of drinking milk relative to eating food is playing a role.

There are countless variables that should be explored in truly scientific work.

The point is that simply observing something doesn’t necessarily tell a scientist what is causing what. An observation is just an observation. Therefore, studies need to be conducted in order to eliminate variables that could confuse the results (known as confounding variables).

This backdrop provides a context with which to explore the field of virology.

Changing Definitions of a Virus

A simple—yet often overlooked—question is as follows: How do we know that viruses exist and that they cause disease? Dr. Thomas Cowan, who has been asking this very question, clarifies: “To be clear, I don’t mean an answer such as ‘You do a test for the virus,’ or ‘All doctors believe there is such a virus.’ I am specifically referring to the steps any virologist in the world should take to identify a new virus….In a sane and rational world, medical authorities would have made the answer to this straightforward question the first and highest priority in their role as educators of the population.”40

Even David Baltimore, PhD, a Nobel laureate for his work in virology,41 didn’t have a good answer to this question when he was asked in a documentary how he would isolate and photograph HIV. His response was: “Didn’t Dr. Gallo do that? I mean, he actually isolated it….I mean, why should I do all of this? This is all textbook stuff you’re asking me….I don’t want to be your textbook. I got other things to do.”42 [emphasis added]

We’re accustomed to turning on the news, or reading an article, and seeing an image of a structure that we’re told is a virus. We’re told that it’s been genetically sequenced. End of story. At that point, as the thinking goes, there’s no need to ask questions because people’s lives are at stake, and we should simply “trust the science.”

But in order to show that a virus exists, one first needs to know what a virus is. As noted in A History of Experimental Virology (1991) by Alfred Grafe: “Celsus [a first-century AD Roman medical writer]…summarized the teachings of Hippocrates and the Greek schools of medicine, which he had translated into Latin. He employed the word virus to mean the equivalent of the Greek poison ios….[A virus was considered to be] a slimy poison of visible origin. This is illustrated by the dog roaming with rage depicted in Egyptian, Greek, and Roman literature, as well as in the constellation of the dog star Sirius, where it unites man and the Gods.”43 [emphasis added]

Moreover, in the book The Poisoned Needle, published in 1957 by Eleanor McBean, PhD, she included definitions from the mid-20th century, and they demonstrate how varied opinions were:

The 1940 Medical Dictionary defines virus as “the specific living principle by which an infectious disease is transmitted.” The definition is vague and meaningless because there is no such thing as a “living” principle….

The Scientific Encyclopedia says viruses have been obtained for experimentation by means of extremely powerful centrifuges which must be specially built. In the same article it is stated that viruses are so small that they cannot be seen by the most powerful microscopes. Then how do they know they produced any? Or is this game of hide and seek just another means of using up… millions of dollars?

The Modern Encyclopedia (1944) says in part: “A virus differs from a bacterium in that the latter can live and reproduce itself in an artificial culture such as beef broth, whereas a virus must live inside a living cell….

Webster’s Dictionary refers to [a] virus as a “slimy or poisonous liquid.”44

The modern definition of a virus is different today than it was in the past. As observed by virologist Dr. Stefan Lanka, the contemporary view of viruses was influenced by work on bacteriophages—viruslike entities found in pure bacteria cultures.45 The 1969 Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded for work on bacteriophages dating back to the 1940s, and the final sentence of the Nobel Prize summary explains that this work “is now generally accepted as the basic pattern of reproduction of all viruses.”46 [emphasis added] (Note: While bacteriophages are sometimes regarded as agents that “infect” or “eat” bacteria, they have also been interpreted in a more benevolent light: they could be viewed as survival mechanisms for bacteria when they are in a stressed situation.47)

Dr. Lanka also notes that James Watson and Francis Crick’s 1953 paper published in Nature changed scientists’ overall orientation. Watson and Crick’s announcement of DNA’s double-helix structure initiated the field of molecular biology, which examines the impact of genes on chemical processes within cells.48 As Dr. Lanka puts it: “From that moment on, the causes of disease were thought to be in the genes. The idea of a virus changed, and overnight a virus was no longer a toxin, but rather a dangerous genetic sequence, a dangerous DNA, a dangerous viral strand, etc. This new genetic virology was founded by young chemists who…had unlimited research money.”49 [emphasis added]

As a result of these beliefs about bacteriophages and DNA, viruses in the modern era have taken on a specific definition that’s different from past iterations. A summary definition is provided by a group of doctors, scientists, and researchers, as follows:

[Viruses are] replicating, protein-coated pieces of genetic material, either DNA or RNA, [that] exist as independent entities in the real world and are able to act as pathogens. That is, the so-called particle with the protein coating and genetic interior is commonly believed to infect living tissues and cells, replicate inside these living tissues, damage the tissues as it makes its way out, and, in doing so, is also believed to create disease and sometimes death in its host—[this is] the so-called viral theory of disease causation. The alleged virus particles are then said to be able to transmit to other hosts, causing disease in them as well.50

First, it’s noteworthy that the definition has changed so many times—and radically so. When people in past eras spoke of a “virus,” they likely weren’t describing the same thing that we’re referring to today. Second, if we adopt the modern definition just described, one might wonder: Has anyone ever seen such a microscopic thing performing all of those steps—infecting living tissues, replicating inside them, and then damaging cells on its way out? A very specific set of steps needs to be validated in order to meet the modern definition of a virus. A 2015 paper published in PLOS Pathogens doesn’t inspire confidence: “How non-enveloped viruses penetrate a host membrane to enter cells and cause disease remains an enigmatic step.”51 [emphasis added]

A Brief History of Germ Theory and Virology

The modern view of viruses posits not only that they exist, but that they cause disease in their host. This is a tenet of what’s more generally called the “germ theory” of disease. Germ theory dominates contemporary allopathic thinking—not just regarding viruses but also bacteria and other microbes.

Germ theory wasn’t always so prevalent, however. Edward Golub, a former Purdue University biology professor, noted: “Since the time of the ancient Greeks, people did not ‘catch’ a disease, they slipped into it. To catch something meant that there was something to catch….Most disease was due to deviation from a good life…. [And when diseases occurred] they could most often be set aright by changes in diet.”52

In 1546, a Roman poet named Girolamo Fracastoro introduced a comprehensive germ-based theory that gained traction.53 However, his theory came before the advent of the microscope, so the idea was highly theoretical. It wasn’t until the 1670s that Antonie van Leeuwenhoek observed bacteria—but not viruses—under a microscope, which initiated the field of microbiology.54 Bacteria are much larger than hypothesized viruses are believed to be.

Louis Pasteur suspected that a tiny virus existed through his work on rabies in the late 19th century, but he never saw a virus because the theorized particle was too small to be seen using the microscopes available at that time.55 One wonders how he knew it was there if he didn’t see it. In any event, Pasteur is a key figure, as he is widely credited for developing the germ theory of disease.56 (Note: While Pasteur is regarded as a hero in allopathic medicine, in other circles he is vilified as a “plagiarist and impostor,” while his contemporary Antoine Béchamp is lauded as a hero. This dynamic is explored in the book titled Béchamp or Pasteur? A Lost Chapter in this History of Biology by Ethel Hume [1923]. Also, historian Gerald Geison evaluated Pasteur’s private notebooks, in a book published by Princeton University Press in 1995, and they revealed “sometimes astonishing…discrepancies between the results reported in [Pasteur’s] published papers and those recorded in his private manuscripts.”57)

The electron microscope was invented in the 1930s, and it wasn’t until this technology was available that anything as small as a hypothesized virus could be seen.58 The first use of an electron microscope in clinical virology was around 1948, and commercial electron microscopes became widely available during the 1960s and 1970s.59 This is an important consideration: the ability to see virus-sized particles is a relatively new development.

Yet, the first alleged discovery of a virus occurred decades before all of this. The Tobacco Mosaic Virus—a “virus” said to infect and damage tobacco and other plants—was described in Dmitri Ivanovsky’s 1903 paper “Über die Mosaikkrankheit der Tabakspflanze” (About the Mosaic Disease of the Tobacco Plant).60 This is regarded as one of the virus’s “proofs.”61 However, as argued by Dr. Mark Bailey—who represents the No Virus position—the experiments lacked valid control comparisons, specifically with regard to environmental conditions. So, the damage that the plants underwent could have been explained by the environment rather than an alleged invisible virus. Thus, Dr. Bailey remarks that the experiments were “unscientific and inconclusive.” Ivanovsky even commented, “This disease finds favourable conditions of existence only in coastal regions. Such a conclusion fully agrees with the [experiment’s] observations concerning the influence of moisture on the development of the disease. Mosaic disease appears to be unique to humid and warm climates.” In response, Dr. Bailey writes: “As germ theory was developing into the predominant disease-causation ideology at that time, rather than concluding that the Mosaic Disease was caused by environmental conditions, Ivanovsky concluded he had discovered an invisible virus.”62

Even if one were to disregard the study’s faulty design, the study, at best, could only develop a conclusion based on indirect evidence—since no virus was actually seen.63 This is a far cry from the declaration that the Tobacco Mosaic Virus was the first virus to be discovered (as Wikipedia reports64).

In 1911, Peyton Rous at the Rockefeller Institute in New York reportedly discovered a virus—a “transmissible agent”—that causes tumors in chickens (later named the Rous sarcoma virus), for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1966. Dr. Bailey provides a critique, however. He notes that a virus was not isolated, that the experiment’s controls were improper, and that the mechanism of causing disease in the experiment was unlike anything that would occur in nature. And since the electron microscope hadn’t been invented yet, no virus was seen. As Dr. Bailey puts it:

A review of [Rous’s] paper, “A Sarcoma of the Fowl,” reveals that he did not claim to isolate anything, let alone anything that met the definition of a virus. His methodology involved grinding up chicken tumour material, filtering it, and injecting it directly into other chickens with the observation that some of them would also develop tumours. He reported that the “control” experiments consisted of injecting unfiltered tumour material into chickens which tended to result in much larger tumours. Rous postulated the presence of a causative ultramicroscopic organism but conceded that “an agency of another sort is not out of the question.” Indeed, the experiment failed to provide any evidence of an infectious and replicating particle [that is, a virus]. It simply showed that diseased tissue introduced by an unnatural and invasive route into another animal could cause it to exhibit a similar disease process.65 [emphasis added]

The “Gold Standard” Method of Virus Isolation

In June of 1954, Thomas Peebles and Nobel laureate John Franklin Enders published a paper on a measles-virus experiment that became the gold-standard method for isolating viruses more broadly. It is the general method used in modern virology, known as the cell-culture method.

As virologist Dr. Stefan Lanka notes, the chronology of events is critical to understand: Dr. Enders won a Nobel Prize in December of 1954 for his work on polio that he had done in prior years. His credibility thus bolstered the status of his June 1954 paper on the measles virus, at a time when there wasn’t a strong model of virology. Dr. Lanka explains the consequence: “This paper became a scientific fact which was never, ever questioned.”66 [emphasis added]

What follows is a layman’s version of the study’s methodology. The specific substances used can vary in modern virology, but they are similar to what Drs. Enders and Peebles used in 1954. They employed the following steps:

1.They took fluids from patients clinically diagnosed with measles, such as throat swabs.67

2.They mixed those fluids with a “soup” of substances, including antibiotics, bovine amniotic fluid, horse serum, beef embryo extract, milk, phenol red, soybean trypsin inhibitor, and also human and monkey kidney cells.

3.They found that some of the cells broke down once the samples from measles patients were added to the soup (this cellular breakdown is known in virology as the cytopathic effect).

The conclusion was: the experiment demonstrated that a virus was in samples taken from measles patients because the samples caused cells in the soup to break down.

Certainly that’s one possibility to consider, but it’s not the only one—if we want to be truly scientific about this. Here is where to really pay attention. The next few ideas are central to the No Virus position.

How do we know that a virus was in the fluids from sick patients in the first place? Lots of cellular material is found in swabs from sick humans. Why wasn’t the “isolated virus”—separated from all other cellular material—added to the cell culture? What if other cellular material from the throat swabs caused the cells in the soup to break down—not an alleged virus? Also, just because the patients were sick, how do we know they had a virus in the first place? They could have been sick from a host of other things.

Furthermore, what if the cell-culture-soup process itself impacts the cells, which would mean that the alleged virus was irrelevant in the breakdown of cells? As virologist Dr. Lanka notes, the experimenters were “killing those cells, intoxifying [sic] them with cytotoxic antibiotics, starving them to death, reducing the nutrition, and of course, adding material proteins which are in decay, and everything which is in decay is toxic and disturbs the cell cultures in the test tube [soup]. [Yet] when those cells are dying in the test tube, [the experimenters equate] it with the presence of the virus…and call it an ‘isolate.’ ” In other words, the conditions of the experiment could have caused the cells to break down—not a virus.

Dr. Lanka also notes that the historical context needs to be considered here: the experimenters concluded that a virus was there because they were extrapolating prior discoveries about bacteria and bacteriophages. Dr. Enders was, in fact, well versed in bacteriology. So there was a presumption that alleged viruses were doing the same thing that had been observed elsewhere in the field of bacteriology. Thus, according to Dr. Lanka, the results of the 1954 experiment were biased: they were interpreted as demonstrations of the presence of a virus even though the experiment hadn’t truly isolated a virus. It was just an inference.68

Moreover, the conclusion that a virus definitively caused cellular breakdown in the experiment is illogical. It suffers from a specific logical fallacy known as “affirming the consequent,” which is summarized as:

If P, then Q.

Q, therefore P.

To put this in terminology relevant to the Enders/Peebles experiment (and to virology studies more broadly, since they employ the same basic methods):

If there is a disease-causing virus in a sample, then it causes cells to break down.

We observed that cells broke down in the experiment; therefore, there was a virus.

The logic here is defective—because alleged viruses aren’t the only things that can cause cells to break down.69 And yet this glaring error is often overlooked.

Dr. Cowan further elaborates on the problems with this gold-standard methodology as it relates to the creation of “live viral” vaccines:

An important-to-understand corollary of [Enders’s and Peebles’s] precedent-setting “discoveries”—and something that almost no physician or layperson realizes—is that every “live viral vaccine” basically is nothing more than a partly purified (minimally filtered) cell-culture [soup] mixture….

[In a 1957 article by Enders, he] reiterated the central dilemma: How can we know the origin of the particles that he chose to call the human measles virus? In this particular quote, he referred to the problem in the context of vaccines: “There is a potential risk in employing cultures of primate cells for the production of vaccines composed of attenuated virus, since the presence of other agents possibly latent in primate tissues cannot be definitively excluded by any known means.”70

This is an important acknowledgment: there might be “agents” in the fluids other than the “virus.” That is not the same as isolating just the “virus.”

It’s also worth noting that Drs. Enders and Peebles made an important admission in their paper: “Additional observations… will be required before it can be confidently asserted that [the cells in the cell-culture soup] are specifically attacked by these viruses.”71 So they weren’t certain that the cell breakdown occurred because of the alleged virus. The researchers also stated: “It must be borne in mind that cytopathic effects [that is, the breakdown of cells in the experiment] which superficially resemble those resulting from infection by the measles agents may possibly be induced by other viral agents present in the monkey kidney tissue…or by unknown factors.”72 [emphasis added]

Therefore, it’s clear that the authors understood that their experimental design did not prove that an alleged virus—which they never isolated—was responsible for the effects they found. Other factors would need to be tested in order to arrive at such a conclusion with confidence. The No Virus critique is thus that the gold-standard experiment used in modern virology does not prove the existence of a virus. And if the existence of a virus hasn’t been proven, it certainly can’t be proven that a nonexistent thing is an intracellular parasite that causes disease in its host.

The 1954 study also lacked proper controls. Dr. Mark Bailey elaborates: “Enders and Peebles needed to identify an independent variable (the alleged virus particle) that was shown to be the cause of the cell breakdown. Their methodology was clearly insufficient in this regard and thus uncontrolled. Additionally, even if they succeeded, they would still need to establish that such particles were the cause of measles through further clinical experiments rather than just laboratory procedures.”73 Dr. Bailey adds: “Ideally, several…experiments should have been done: some with no human-derived samples added, some with human-derived samples from well [as opposed to sick] subjects, and some with human-derived samples from unwell subjects, but said not to have measles clinically or some other alleged ‘viral’ condition.”74

Because modern virology studies are modeled from the foundational 1954 paper, they also lack proper controls. Dr. Bailey has evaluated countless experiments with this in mind, and he notes the following: “In many virology publications, a control or ‘mock-infected’ experiment is mentioned, but the details of such experiments are conspicuous by their absence.”75 Dr. Andrew Kaufman similarly reports that when he has reached out to scientists asking for details about their “mock infections,” he’s been unable to get straight answers from them.76 It’s not unreasonable to ask for such details, either. As Dr. Kaufman notes, Nature’s guidelines for the submission of scientific papers explicitly asks scientists to “include descriptions of standard protocols and experimental procedures” and “describe the experimental protocol in detail, referring to amounts of reagents in parentheses, when possible.”77

Problems with Artificial Environments and Electron Microscopes

There’s an even more fundamental issue with this gold-standard method. It has a hidden presupposition that often goes unacknowledged, and it applies not just to virology but to all sorts of biology experiments. The studies assume that what’s happening in a laboratory, test-tube environment—outside of human bodies and with very specific substances—is a close-enough proxy for what happens inside of human bodies. But how can we be certain that what’s happening to a limited number of cells in a soup represents what happens in a living, multifaceted human body that has many other complex processes occurring at once? And, moreover, should global health policies be determined on the basis of what happens in contrived, artificial, test-tube environments?78

These very issues lead to questions about the images seen via electron microscopes. How can we know that the pictures taken of things happening outside the body are reflective of what goes on inside the body?

The images are also static. That’s problematic for identifying viruses, because they’re supposed to be intracellular parasites that enter into host cells. A static image doesn’t show the movement of something that performs all of the actions embedded within the modern definition of a virus.79 Dr. Samantha Bailey elaborates on this issue:

When the virus theory was taught to me in medical school, I believed it because I thought that sound scientific experiments must have been completed to back the theory. It wasn’t until later…I investigated the literature myself and found major problems due to gaps in the evidence. It became clear that much of what was being presented as “evidence” was simply information being potentially misinterpreted in order to fit the theory. Static images are something that can easily be misinterpreted, after we assign meaning to them, that may in fact be disconnected from nature and reality. And this is where the problem of electron micrographs of what are said to be viruses needs to be explored.

During my training, I would read up on a disease, such as measles, and somewhere in the chapter of a book would be an image of what was said to be the measles virus. But what had been done to show that this snapshot of some particles had confirmed that they were viruses that could cause this disease? Was the alleged criminal really the cause of disease because somebody had pointed to it with an incriminating arrow? It kind of reminds me of accusing a person outside a bank of being a bank robber just because they were there.80 [emphasis added]

Additionally, the process of looking at samples under an electron microscope involves tampering with the sample.81 That means the already problematic static image of something taken outside of a living, natural environment is also altered. For instance, as Dr. Bailey notes, “electron micrographs are photos of stuff that has been embedded in resin and then cut up into very thin slices. Whatever is visualized in these images is dead. The particles certainly don’t replicate.”82 Also, the electron beam that’s used in the microscope can cause problems because of its high energy, and related temperature changes can alter the sample.83 Similarly, in “cryo” electron microscopy, the sample is frozen.84

Cellular material can also be misidentified under an electron microscope. For example, a 2020 paper in Kidney360, titled “Appearances Can Be Deceiving—Viral-like Inclusions in COVID-19 Negative Renal Biopsies by Electron Microscopy,” warns about possible misinterpretations of electron microscopy images. Similarly, in an April 2021 article in Emerging Infectious Diseases on the CDC’s website, titled “Difficulties in Differentiating Coronaviruses from Subcellular Structures in Human Tissues by Electron Microscopy,” the authors admit to problems with electron microscopy images of SARS-CoV-2. They state: “Efforts to combat…COVID-19…have placed a renewed focus on the use of transmission electron microscopy for identifying coronavirus in tissues. In attempts to attribute pathology of COVID-19 patients directly to tissue damage caused by SARS-CoV-2, investigators have inaccurately reported subcellular structures, including coated vesicles, multivesicular bodies, and vesiculating rough endoplasmic reticulum, as coronavirus particles.”85 [emphasis added]

Dr. Bailey mentions an important assertion embedded in that statement: “[The authors] are saying that to identify a virus, you need to know exactly what to look for in a structural sense. That would be a reasonable statement if they had already established that they knew exactly what a virus looks like. But how do these experts know what a virus looks like?”86

The study references a 1967 study in which the researchers allegedly isolated a coronavirus and took pictures, which now serves as a standard template for identifying future coronaviruses. The research was done at the Common Cold Unit that existed for nearly four decades after World War II.87 But as Dr. Bailey notes, that 1967 study was looking at photographs of particles within a mixture of cell-culture soups rather than isolated viruses. The experimenters declared that certain particles seen under their electron microscope were viruses because they looked like another “virus” seen elsewhere, called “avian infectious bronchitis virus.” And that particle type, as Dr. Bailey explains, “has never been properly isolated either.” The experimenters also never demonstrated that the particles under the microscope were parasitic in nature—as viruses are said to be. She thus describes the images as “cellular vesicles of unknown significance” rather than “viruses.” All future researchers looking into coronaviruses are “building on an unestablished premise” (in Dr. Bailey’s words). She humorously refers to the images as UVOs (unidentified viral objects).88

Furthermore, it’s important for electron micrographs to be taken of control groups as well. The No Virus contention is that control images aren’t taken. In fact, since the independent variable (the hypothesized virus) hasn’t been isolated, a proper control is an impossibility.89 Therefore, the researchers can’t know if what they’re seeing under a microscope would show up anyway—even if an alleged virus hadn’t been added.90

The No Virus camp is thus unconvinced by virology studies that show pictures of things claimed to be viruses—if the scientific method isn’t properly followed. Dr. Lanka summarizes the situation well: “Virologists never, ever saw a virus inside the living being or inside its liquids….Everybody can check it easily on every single photograph that should show a virus—that it’s from a cell culture [soup]. But never from the blood, never from the saliva, never from the semen, never from another liquid of the body. Never from a lymph node. Never from the inside. Not from a human, not from an animal, not from a plant. This is astonishing….They never managed to get a virus photographed inside a human being.”91 (Note: When interviewing Dr. Lanka, Dr. Thomas Cowan mentioned that he’s looked for scientific papers describing the morphology of a virus from a living, diseased person. He says there are a few papers that claim to have done so, but after reading the details, the scientists say the things they find have very different morphologies—meaning they look different. Therefore, it’s unlikely that they are actually all the same virus. So the experimenters are likely seeing other cellular material that’s being mistakenly called a “virus.”92) [emphasis added]

Sequencing Genomes

The No Virus position here is ultimately very simple. It was alluded to previously but warrants another mention because this is such a hot topic. In order to generate a genetic sequence of something, first that thing needs to be isolated; then its genetic sequence can be determined. Without first isolating just the virus, how can it be known that the genetic material that’s being analyzed comes from the virus specifically? In the absence of pure virus isolation, genetic material taken from samples could be from other debris. This makes CRISPR’s alleged “virus” detection techniques inherently problematic—and the same goes for any other genetic testing technology. (Note: On a related topic, any material alleged to “come from a virus” such as “spike proteins” can’t be known to come from a virus if the virus hasn’t been isolated first. Cellular material might have origins that have nothing to do with a virus.93)

Consider Dr. Mark Bailey’s criticism of the original genetic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2. He explains that the team of scientists “assembled an in silico ‘genome’ from genetic fragments of unknown provenance, found in the crude lung washings of a single ‘case’ [of SARS-CoV-2].”94 In silico refers to a computational model of a hypothesized genome; that is, the genome doesn’t exist in its entirety in the experiment at all.95 As Dr. Kaufman notes, an in silico genome is an “artificial version of something that doesn’t exist. It is a model or a simulation.” In essence, it’s man-made.96 [emphasis added]

And yet, the original alleged genetic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 was not positioned to the public with such caveats. Dr. Bailey adds: “A virus is claimed to be a tiny replication-competent obligate intracellular parasite….It is an infectious particle that causes disease in a host. All [the authors of the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequencing paper] had was a 41-year old man with pneumonia and a software-assembled model ‘genome’ made from sequences of unestablished origin found in the man’s lung washings.”97 [emphasis added]

Additionally, Dr. Bailey criticizes the lack of controls used. Controls would entail, for example, running the sequencing process on a variety of samples, including those without the alleged virus.98

Furthermore, from the No Virus perspective, alleged “variants” of viruses are just combinations of genetic fragments that are patched together in a computer to create a slightly different overall result. Various “template” genomes are established, so scientists can look for something specific; and if they find a match, they can declare that they found a variant of the virus. But the same problems persist in this process: without an isolated virus, scientists cannot be certain of the genetic material’s origin.

Put another way by Dr. Kaufman, the identification of alleged “variants” is simply an inability to find an exact match of previously patched-together genomes. But instead of interpreting them as failures to reproduce results, researchers just call them “variants.”99

For further information on the No Virus position regarding genetic sequencing—a highly technical matter—see Dr. Bailey’s “A Farewell to Virology.”100

“Antiviral” Drugs

Without first isolating a virus, inventing a drug that helps the body fight the unidentified virus is an impossibility. Yet antiviral drugs exist. What does the No Virus group think this class of drugs is doing?

In response to a question along these lines posed by podcast host Tom Woods in February 2023, Dr. Bailey replied: “None of [these antivirals] act against viruses….[Mainstream virologists allege] that [a viral] particle goes inside a host cell, such as a human cell, and uses the cell’s equipment to make more copies of itself. So essentially an ‘antiviral’ [drug] just has to interfere with some process within the host cell. So they’re not antivirals. They’re just antimetabolic agents basically.…Maybe the closest analogy would be chemotherapy. It’s not attacking the cancer cell, per se. It’s an antimetabolite. It’s stopping processes from happening [and] slowing them down within the cell.”101 [emphasis added]

Dr. Bailey has further noted that antiviral drugs are claimed to prevent the “virus” from replicating. Researchers determine this by looking at particular nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) levels in a test-tube environment and find that there is less produced when the antiviral is added. That is, the “viral load” is diminished.

However, as just discussed, the origin of such genetic sequences cannot be declared as viral without isolating a virus first. Dr. Bailey remarks, “The genetic sequences in such experiments could be produced endogenously (from within the cell) which does not require the existence of the alleged virus. An example concerning SARS-CoV-2 was when researchers in Australia reported they were ‘able to effect ~5000-fold reduction in virus’ with the drug Ivermectin. In reality, they were only measuring cell-culture RNA levels with the unfounded claim that the RNA was known to come from a virus.”102

The No Virus camp thus contends that the effects and mechanisms of “antiviral” drugs are misinterpreted by modern researchers.

Factors Allegedly Preventing Virus Isolation

The “ask” of the No Virus camp seems pretty simple: they want scientists to follow the scientific method so that it can be determined whether viruses, as currently defined, exist and cause disease. They want an isolated virus—that is, an independent variable—and they want proper controls. However, the status quo defends its current methods. Dr. Thomas Cowan describes a common experience among No Virus proponents:

When I ask doctors or virologists why they don’t carry out [a] simple, clear, logical, rational proof to demonstrate the existence of a new virus and show it causes disease, I hear one of two answers. The first is that not enough of the virus is present in any bodily fluid of any sick person to find it in this way. [For instance, Dr. Kaufman] even asked scientists whether they would see the virus if the bronchial fluid from 10,000 people with “COVID” were pooled, but the response is the same: “There is not enough virus to find.” This, of course, begs the question: On what theory are we then claiming the virus is making people sick? To this, there is no answer.103

Put another way, if there isn’t “enough virus” for it to be studied, then what is the mechanism by which it is so contagious, and in some cases, deadly? And furthermore, how do they know that there isn’t enough of the virus…if they’re admitting that they haven’t isolated it in the first place?

In fact, the argument that Dr. Cowan references is the same one that Dr. Luc Montagnier made when he acknowledged “we did not purify” (in his 1983 HIV work). Dr. Montagnier elaborated in an interview in 1997: “There was so little production of the virus [that] it was impossible to see what might be in a concentrate of the virus from the gradient [‘pure virus’]. There was not enough virus to do that.”104

Dr. Cowan continues: “The second answer I have heard [in defense of virology’s typical methods] is that viruses are intracellular ‘parasites’—so, of course, we can’t find them outside the cells. When asked how the virus passes from one person to another, as we are told it does, virologists reply, ‘It buds out of the cell, goes into a droplet and travels to the next person.’ In other words, the virus is transmitted when it is outside of the cell. I can only wonder why virologists can’t find it during this transmission step since they clearly think it is outside the cell.”105

Another defense of virology’s methods is that the technology doesn’t exist to isolate particles as small as viruses. However, Dr. Kaufman argues that exosomes and bacteriophages, which are similarly sized, have been isolated. He points to representative studies to back up his claim.106 Dr. Stefan Lanka adds, “These [bacteriophages] could be photographed, isolated as whole particles, and all their components could be biochemically determined and characterized. This is real, and cannot be contested….This, however, has never happened with alleged viruses of humans, animals, and plants because these do not exist.”107

Finally, the HART organization—a group of distinguished doctors, scientists, and other academics in the United Kingdom—published a critique of the No Virus position in an October 2023 article. They explicitly acknowledge that “there has never been a pure isolate of SARS-CoV-2 virus.” Incredibly, they then remark: “This could be because no-one [sic] has tried hard enough to carry out this work.” Their article also refers to “the virus model.” This is an admission that, even from a mainstream perspective, the notion of a contagious, disease-causing virus has not been firmly established. (Note: For a point-by-point rebuttal of the article’s contentions, see Dr. Cowan’s October 11, 2023, webinar alongside Dr. Mark Bailey.108) [emphasis added]

Dr. Stefan Lanka’s Control Study

One might rightly ask: If the No Virus perspective is correct about something so fundamental, why don’t its advocates simply conduct their own laboratory experiments to demonstrate the flaws in modern virology? Why don’t they run proper controls on their own? Going forward, this would be an important strategy for the No Virus camp, if they can obtain the funding to do so. Scientific journals would likely be reluctant to publish such research, but the studies could still be done. It also takes brave scientists to engage in such a matter. They could be risking their careers.

There is one noteworthy instance, however. The study was conducted by Dr. Stefan Lanka in 2021 and, not surprisingly, it wasn’t published in a mainstream journal. He sought to study whether cell breakdown occurs in cell-culture soups…without adding fluids from a sick person believed to be sick from a virus. In other words, he wanted to see if the various substances in cell-culture soups cause cells to break down on their own. This is the sort of control study that the No Virus camp had been asking for.

Dr. Cowan summarizes the results:

[One of Dr. Lanka’s trials] shows what happened when [he] used the same procedures that have been used in every modern isolation of every pathogenic virus that I have seen. This included changing the nutrient medium to “minimal nutrient medium”—meaning lowering the percentage of fetal calf serum from the usual 10% to 1%, which lowers the nutrients available for the cells to grow, thereby stressing them—and tripling the antibiotic concentration….On day five of the experiment, the characteristic [cell breakdown] occurred, “proving” the existence and pathogenicity of the virus—except, at no point was a pathogenic virus added to the culture. This outcome can only mean that the [cell breakdown] was a result of the way the culture experiment was done and not from any virus.109 [emphasis added]

Dr. Lanka ran another trial just like this one, except that he added yeast RNA—rather than fluids from a person sick from an alleged virus—to the cell-culture soup. Again, the cells in the soup broke down.110

Thus, these trials demonstrate that cellular breakdown in classic virology experiments can occur without a virus. The implication—if extended beyond this experiment—is that the gold-standard virology experiments aren’t proving the existence of a disease-causing virus. In other words, the effect that scientists typically see could be an artifact of the way the experiment is set up.

Many more similar experiments and independent replications are needed, but Dr. Lanka’s results lend initial support to the No Virus camp’s position. Also, No Virus proponents have found some examples in virology papers suggesting that the procedure itself can cause cells to break down—which supports Dr. Lanka’s findings.111

Challenges to Virology Prevail in German Courts

For those who accept Dr. Lanka’s results, they are powerful and certainly challenge the core of virology. But No Virus advocates also find hope in court victories in Germany—two instances in particular. The first relates to a 2011 challenge issued by Dr. Lanka: he offered 100,000 euros to anyone who could show scientific evidence that the measles virus exists. He did this because he was concerned about a growing momentum to mandate the measles vaccine for children in Germany. In 2015, physician David Bardens sued Dr. Lanka for 100,000 euros because he submitted six papers which, in his mind, proved the existence of the measles virus. Dr. Samantha Bailey analyzed the six papers and gave a summary as to why they don’t show virus isolation:112

1.The 1954 Enders and Peebles study (the problems with its cell-culture-soup design have already been discussed).113

2.A 1958 cell-culture experiment similar to the Enders and Peebles study, which suffered from the same problems.114

3.A 1969 paper showing many pictures of alleged viruses but lacked evidence that the photographs were of viruses. The particles also weren’t established to be infectious or disease-causing.115

4.A 1984 paper in which the authors showed purified particles that they claimed to be measles viruses, but lacked evidence that they were in fact measles viruses that cause disease.116

5.A 1995 consensus review paper in which the authors claimed to describe the measles virus genome.117 As Dr. Bailey puts it: “This [genome] was based on detecting genetic fragments in test tubes and assembling them into a hypothetical model. It was not established that the computer-generated sequence exists in nature.”

6.A 2007 paper describing a classic cell-culture experiment with monkey kidney cells, which ran no controls and had the same methodological problems that all virology studies do.118

A lower court in Germany—which did not rely on expert-witness testimony—ordered Dr. Lanka to pay Dr. Bardens, and the media jumped on the story. What the media talks about much less is the fact that Dr. Lanka appealed the case and won in 2016. Dr. Bardens then appealed to the highest court in Germany, and his appeal was dismissed.119 So Dr. Lanka ultimately won.

Skeptics claim that Dr. Lanka only won because of a technicality or a semantic formulation. However, during the proceedings, Andreas Podbielski—a professor in the department of medical microbiology and virology in Rostock—admitted that none of the six papers that Dr. Bardens submitted had been done with proper controls.120 As Dr. Samantha Bailey summarizes the situation: “The best six papers in the entire measles ‘virus’ literature didn’t follow the scientific method.”121 [emphasis added]

The second victory in the German court system came in April 2023 at the hands of engineer Marvin Haberland. He wanted to challenge COVID-19 lockdown measures, so he intentionally violated a local mask mandate and was fined, which enabled him to present a case in court.

Germany’s COVID-19 policies were dependent on the Law for the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases in Humans. The first paragraph of the law suggested that institutions needed to abide by science—meaning they needed to follow the scientific method. Haberland comments that he heard Dr. Lanka—who is one of his “heroes”—once suggest that if a person receives a fine, the strategy should be to point to the first paragraph of the law and argue that it’s not fulfilled because virology does not follow the scientific method. And if paragraph one is not fulfilled, then the rest of the law should become irrelevant.

Haberland decided to use this exact argument in his case. He even asked virologists around the world about their “control” studies. He reports: “None of them carried out the controls, and they even admit that….They really admit that they do not do any scientific controls….For the first step [of virus isolation experiments], which is the [cell breakdown step] they will sometimes say they do [controls], but when they are asked to provide documentation or evidence on how they did it, they also cannot do it.”122 He adds, “We have hundreds of letters from virologists all over the world confirming they have not done the control experiments—specifically in the genome sequencing—nobody has done them.” [emphasis added]

In 2023, the judge assigned to Haberland’s case decided to close the case—which was an effective concession and a victory for Haberland. Four others replicated Haberland’s template, and the same thing happened: the court closed the cases. As Haberland puts it: “If the court had any possible chance to win, they would use the [opportunity] to try to somehow make a precedent and show everyone, ‘Look, these [No Virus] people are stupid. They have no chance, and virology is actually a [legitimate] thing.’ But they didn’t make this case.” In other words, Haberland feels that the judge closed his case “to avoid any further damage to virology.” He also speculates that the judge could have put himself in danger if he had allowed virology’s problems to be exposed so publicly.123

Freedom of Information Challenges

Governments around the world have also admitted to virology’s failure to physically isolate viruses. The admissions have come through “freedom of information” (FOI) submissions led by biostatistician Christine Massey of Canada. FOI requests allow everyday citizens in many countries to obtain access to records that aren’t already in the public domain. In June 2023, Massey summarized the state of the FOI process:

Myself and people around the world have taken advantage of this process to seek records that would be necessary in order for anyone to show the existence of the alleged COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2). And if somebody actually wanted to conduct science and show that there is a virus that is infecting people, they would need to actually find it in order to [genetically] sequence and characterize a particle and study it. With controlled experiments…you would actually have to have a sample of this alleged virus to work with. And if nobody has a sample of the alleged virus, then nobody can have conducted any science. And so this is what the majority of these FOI requests were focused on. We were asking for any records of anyone in the world ever finding this alleged virus in the bodily fluid or tissue or excrement of any people anywhere on Earth by anyone, ever.

And to date, we have responses from 216 different institutions in forty different countries, and so far no one has been able to provide us with even one record. They can’t provide us with even one record, and they can’t cite any record. So they’ve all admitted that they don’t have a sample of the alleged virus, and they don’t even know of anyone else who did obtain a sample of this alleged virus.124 [emphasis added]

For example, the first record obtained was from the CDC (with letterhead from the US Department of Health and Human Services [HHS]) on November 2, 2020, in response to a FOI request. The request asked for:

All records in the possession, custody, or control of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) describing the isolation of the SARS-COV-2 virus, directly from a sample from a diseased patient, where the sample was not first combined with any other source of genetic material (i.e., monkey kidney cells aka vero cells; lung cells from a lung cancer patient).

Please note that I am using “isolation” in the everyday sense of the word: the act of separating a thing(s) from everything else. I am not requesting records where “isolation of SARS-COV-2” refers instead to: the culturing of something; or the performance of an amplification test (i.e., a PCR test); or the sequencing of something.

Please note that my request is not limited to records that were authored by the CDC or that pertain to work done by the CDC. My request includes any sort of record, for example (but not limited to) any published peer-reviewed study that the CDC has downloaded or printed.

If any such records match the above description of requested records and are currently available to the public elsewhere, please provide enough information about each record so that I may identify and access each record with certainty (i.e., title, author[s], date, journal, where the public may access it).125

The response from the CDC, via the HHS, was: “A search of our records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request.”126 [emphasis added]

Massey notes that in all of the responses starting from March 1, 2021, the CDC “stopped admitting flat out that they didn’t have any records. They started giving more convoluted responses to make it sound like they do have science when they actually don’t. And [they direct] us to irrelevant studies.”

A March 1, 2021, response from the CDC stated: “The definition of ‘isolation’ provided in the request is outside of what is possible in virology.”127 So the CDC is saying that isolating an independent variable in a scientific experiment, which is necessary in order to do science, is not possible. It’s an explicit admission, as the No Virus group sees it, that virology is not practicing science. [emphasis added]

In another request, Massey’s team asked for details about control methods used in virus isolation studies and the whole genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2. The UK Health Agency responded on March 25, 2022, by citing a “national security” exemption, arguing that releasing details would “directly contravene an explicit request from the World Health Organization.”128

Massey decided to expand the search beyond SARS-CoV-2, asking government agencies to point her to evidence for the isolation of any alleged virus from any diseased person. In a December 20, 2021, response from the Public Health Agency of Canada, the answer was: “Your request resulted in a ‘No Records Exist,’ because of the way that you have formulated your request. The isolation of a virus cannot be completed without the use of another medium….The gold standard assay used to determine the presence of intact virus in patient samples is virus isolation in cell culture.”129 However, as discussed earlier, the No Virus argument contends that the so-called gold-standard, cell-culture-soup method is highly problematic. And this is the point that the No Virus camp makes: the field of virology is presupposing that the gold-standard method dating back to 1954 is valid, when apparently few scientists have gone back to question the foundation on which the entire field is based.

Massey has also started to request evidence for the isolation of other viruses specifically. She’s received responses from various agencies around the world, and so far they have been unable to provide records for the following “viruses”: adenovirus, Ebola-virus, Epstein-Barr, hepatitis B and C, herpes, HIV, HPV, H1N1 (swine flu), H5N1 (avian flu), lentivirus, Marburg virus, measles, MERS, monkeypox, rabies, RSV, SARS (or any other common-cold-associated coronaviruses), smallpox, West Nile, XMRV, and Zika.130

These are startling results.

Settling the Virus Debate

Dr. Mark Bailey sums up the No Virus position well: “One of the pivotal issues with virology was that it invented itself as a field before establishing if viruses actually existed. It has been trying to justify itself since its inception.”131

The fundamental problems discussed in this chapter thus give reason to doubt a key element of germ-focused allopathic medicine. There isn’t much of a middle ground here: either you believe there are deadly viruses that can be transmitted from person to person—and live with the appropriate precautions—or you don’t. From a public-health-policy perspective, the differences are massive. Lock-downs, mask regulations, vaccine mandates, business shutdowns, surveillance, and all of the measures we’ve experienced during the COVID-19 era would make no sense if the deadly virus justifying the measures didn’t exist in the way that we’ve been told. Furthermore, without an “invisible enemy,” any future pandemics—and associated tyrannical measures—wouldn’t be possible. So this is far more than an intellectual exercise.

A proposed method to resolve the matter was outlined by twenty doctors, scientists, and researchers in July of 2022—all of whom signed a document titled “Settling the Virus Debate.”132 It lays out the precise scientific protocols that multiple virology labs around the world could conduct. As of the time of this writing, more than a year after the document’s publication, there haven’t been any takers. (Note: Dr. Stefan Lanka did not include his name as a signatory because he feels that virology has already been refuted and there isn’t a need to offer virology any more challenges.133)

An overarching hurdle for the No Virus position is that a negative can’t be proven. It’s not possible to prove that something doesn’t exist. But, at the same time, it also can’t be proven that a “flying spaghetti monster” doesn’t exist.134 There’s always the possibility: “Maybe we just haven’t found it yet.”

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