3rd English Edition, 2021
Original German Title: Virus-Wahn
Published by Books on Demand GmbH
First published in 2007 by Trafford Publishing
© Torsten Engelbrecht, Claus Köhnlein, Samantha Bailey
All rights reserved
Translation: Samantha Bailey, Carina Hahn, Megan Chapelas, Danielle Egan
Editing: Torsten Engelbrecht, Samantha Bailey, Carina Hahn, Danielle Egan, David Crowe
Printing, production and layout: BoD–Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt, Germany
Cover: Heike Müller, Robin Hahn
Photos (cover): Gürsoy Dogtas
ISBN: 978-3-7534-4880-0
For Mark, Weston and Augie
(Samantha Bailey)
For Alexa, Gabriel and Tasha
(Stefano Scoglio)
For Christiane, Theresa, Johanna, Catharina and Julius
(Claus Köhnlein)
For Anela, Liam, Maria, Karen, Eckart and
Labolina— and for all those who are committed to an
equitable and loving coexistence on this planet!
A special thanks to Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos!
(Torsten Engelbrecht)
„Ultimate Scepticism. —But what after all are man’s truths?
—They are his irrefutable errors.“
Friedrich Nietzsche
„The Joyous Science,“ aphorism 265
If one follows public pronouncements, the world is repeatedly afflicted with new terrible virus diseases. As the latest horror variant, the so-called coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 dominated the headlines. The population is also terrified by reports of measles, swine flu, SARS, BSE, AIDS or polio. However, this virus mayhem ignores very basic scientific facts: the existence, the pathogenicity and the deadly effects of these agents have never been proven. The medical establishment and its loyal media acolytes claim that this evidence has been produced. But these claims are highly suspect because modern medicine has pushed direct virus proof methods aside and uses dubious indirect tools to “prove” the existence of viruses such as antibody tests and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
The authors of “Virus Mania,” journalist Torsten Engelbrecht and doctor of internal medicine Claus Köhnlein, MD, the general practitioner and research physician Samantha Bailey, MD, and the expert in microbiology Stefano Scoglio, BSc PhD, show that these alleged contagious viruses may be, in fact, alternatively be seen as particles produced by the cells themselves as a consequence of certain stress factors such as drugs and toxins. These particles are then identified by antibody and PCR tests and (wrongly) interpreted as epidemic-causing viruses by doctors who have been indoctrinated for over 100 years by the theory that microbes are deadly and only modern medications and vaccines will protect us from virus pandemics.
The central aim of this book is to steer the discussion back to a real scientific debate and put medicine back on the path of an impartial analysis of the facts. It will put medical experiments, clinical trials, statistics and government policies under the microscope, revealing that the people charged with protecting our health and safety have deviated from this path.
Along the way, Engelbrecht, Köhnlein, Bailey and Scoglio will analyze all possible causes of illness such as pharmaceuticals, lifestyle drugs, pesticides, heavy metals, pollution, stress and processed (and sometimes genetically modified) foods. All of these can heavily damage the body of humans and animals and even kill them. And these factors are precisely the ones that typically prevail where the victims of alleged viruses live and work. To substantiate these claims, the authors cite dozens of highly renowned scientists, among them the Nobel laureates Kary Mullis, Barbara McClintock, Walter Gilbert, Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet and microbiologist and Pulitzer Prize winner René Dubos. The book presents more than 1,400 pertinent scientific references, the majority of which have been published recently.
The topic of this book is of pivotal significance. The pharmaceutical companies and top scientists rake in enormous sums of money by attacking germs and the media boosts its audience ratings and circulations with sensationalized reporting (the coverage of the New York Times and Der Spiegel are specifically analyzed). Individuals pay the highest price of all, without getting what they deserve and need most to maintain health: enlightenment about the real causes and true necessities for prevention and cure of their illnesses. “The first step is to give up the illusion that the primary purpose of modern medical research is to improve people’s health most effectively and efficiently,” advises John Abramson of Harvard Medical School. “The primary purpose of commercially-funded clinical research is to maximize financial return on investment, not health.”
“Virus Mania” will inform you on how such an environment took root—and how to empower yourself for a healthy life.
Torsten Engelbrecht works as investigative journalist in Hamburg. In 2009, he received the Alternative Media Award for his article “The Amalgam Controversy.” He was trained at the renowned magazine for professional journalists Message and was a permanent editor at the Financial Times Deutschland, among others. He has written for publications such as Off-Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Rubikon, Greenpeace Magazin and The Ecologist. In 2010 his book “Die Zukunft der Krebsmedizin” (The Future of Cancer Medicine) has been published, with 3 doctors as co-authors. See www.torstenengelbrecht.com.
Dr. Claus Köhnlein, MD, is a medical specialist of internal diseases. He completed his residency in the Oncology Department at the University of Kiel. Since 1993, he has worked in his own medical practice, treating also Hepatitis C and AIDS patients who are skeptical of antiviral medications. Köhnlein is one of the world’s most experienced experts when it comes to alleged viral epidemics. In April 2020, he was mentioned in the OffGuardian article “8 MORE Experts Questionig the Coronavirus Panic.” An interview with him by Russia Today journalist Margarita Bityutskikh, published on Youtube in September 2020, on the topic “fatal COVID-19 overtherapy” achieved almost 1.6 million views within a short time.
Dr. Samantha Bailey, MD, is a research physician in New Zealand. She completed her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree at Otago University in 2005. She has worked in general practice, telehealth and in clinical trials for over 12 years with a particular interest in novel tests and treatments for medical diseases. She has the largest YouTube health channel in New Zealand, and creates educational health videos based on questions from her audience. Bailey has also been a co-presenter for a nationwide television health show in New Zealand that debunks common health misconceptions, called The Checkup.
Dr. Stefano Scoglio, BSc PhD, is an expert in microbiology and naturopathy. Since 2004, he has been working as a scientific researcher, publishing many articles in international scientific journals and coordinating scientific and clinical research on Klamath algae extracts, and on microalgae-based probiotics, in cooperation with the Italian National Research Center and various Universities. He is the inventor of 7 medical patents. For his important scientific publications, in 2018, Scoglio was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
The book “Virus Mania” presents a tragic message that will, hopefully, contribute to the re-insertion of ethical values in the conduct of virus research, public health policies, media reporting, and activities of the pharmaceutical companies. When American journalist Celia Farber courageously published, in Harper’s Magazine (March 2006) the article “Out of control—AIDS and the corruption of medical science,” some readers probably attempted to reassure themselves that this “corruption” was an isolated case. This is very far from the truth as documented so well in this book. It is only the tip of the iceberg. Corruption of research is a widespread phenomenon found in many major, supposedly contagious health problems.
Scientific research on viruses (or prions in the case of BSE) slipped onto the wrong track following basically the same systematic pathway which always includes several key steps: inventing the risk of a disastrous epidemic, incriminating an elusive pathogen, ignoring alternative toxic causes, manipulating epidemiology with non-verifiable numbers to maximize the false perception of an imminent catastrophe, and promising salvation with vaccines. This guarantees large financial returns. But how is it possible to achieve all of this? Simply by relying on the most powerful activator of human decision making process, i.e. FEAR!
We are not witnessing viral epidemics; we are witnessing epidemics of fear. And both the media and the Big Pharma carry most of the responsibility for amplifying fears, fears that happen, incidentally, to always ignite fantastically profitable business. Research hypotheses covering these areas of virus research are practically never scientifically verified with appropriate controls. Instead, they are established by “consensus.” This is then rapidly reshaped into a dogma, efficiently perpetuated in a quasi-religious manner by the media, including ensuring that research funding is restricted to projects supporting the dogma, excluding research into alternative hypotheses. A key tool to keep dissenting voices out of the debate is censorship at various levels ranging from the popular media to scientific publications.
Transposing the principles of bacterial infections to viruses was, of course, very tempting but should not have been done without giving parallel attention to the innumerable risk factors in our toxic environment; to the toxicity of many drugs, and to some nutritional deficiencies. Cancer research had similar problems. The hypothesis that cancer might be caused by viruses was formulated in 1903, but it has never been convincingly demonstrated. Most of the experimental laboratory studies by virus-hunters have been based on the use of inbred mice, inbred implying a totally unnatural genetic background. Were these mice appropriate models for the study of human cancer? (we are far from being inbred!) True, these mice made possible the isolation and purification of “RNA tumor viruses,” later renamed “retroviruses” and well characterized by electron microscopy. But are these viral particles simply associated with the murine tumors, or are they truly the culprit of malignant transformation? Are these particles real exogenous infective particles, or endogenous defective viruses hidden in our chromosomes? The question is still debatable. What is certain is that viral particles similar to those readily recognized in cancerous and leukemic mice have never been seen nor isolated in human cancers. Of mice and men.
However, by the time this became clear, in the late 1960s, viral oncology had achieved a dogmatic, quasi-religious status. If viral particles cannot be seen by electron microscopy in human cancers, the problem was with electron microscopy, not with the dogma of viral oncology! This was the time molecular biology was taking a totally dominant posture in viral research. “Molecular markers” for retroviruses were therefore invented (reverse transcriptase for example) and substituted most conveniently for the absent viral particles, hopefully salvaging the central dogma of viral oncology. This permitted the viral hypothesis to survive for another ten years, until the late 1970s, with the help of increasingly generous support from funding agencies and from pharmaceutical companies. However by 1980 the failure of this line of research was becoming embarrassingly evident, and the closing of some viral oncology laboratories would have been inevitable, except that …
Except what? Virus cancer research would have crashed to a halt except that, in 1981, five cases of severe immune deficiencies were described by a Los Angeles physician, all among homosexual men who were also all sniffing amyl nitrite, were all abusing other drugs, abusing antibiotics, and probably suffering from malnutrition and STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). It would have been logical to hypothesize that these severe cases of immune deficiency had multiple toxic origins. This would have amounted to incrimination of these patients’ life-style. Unfortunately, such discrimination was, politically, totally unacceptable. Therefore, another hypothesis had to be found—these patients were suffering from a contagious disease caused by a new … retrovirus! Scientific data in support of this hypothesis was and, amazingly enough, still is totally missing. That did not matter, and instantaneous and passionate interest of cancer virus researchers and institutions erupted immediately. This was salvation for the viral laboratories where AIDS now became, almost overnight, the main focus of research. It generated huge financial support from Big Pharma, more budget for the CDC and NIH, and nobody had to worry about the life style of the patients who became at once the innocent victims of this horrible virus, soon labeled as HIV.
Nevertheless, the HIV/AIDS hypothesis has totally failed to achieve major goals. No AIDS cure has ever been found; no verifiable epidemiological predictions have ever been made; and no HIV vaccine has ever been successfully prepared. Instead, highly toxic (but not curative) drugs have been most irresponsibly used, with frequent, lethal side effects. Yet not a single HIV particle has ever been observed by electron microscopy in the blood of patients supposedly having a high viral load! So what? All the most important newspapers and magazine have displayed attractive computerized, colorful images of HIV that all originate from laboratory cell cultures, but never from even a single AIDS patient. Despite this stunning omission the HIV/AIDS dogma is still solidly entrenched ...
Yes, HIV/AIDS is emblematic of the corruption of virus research that is remarkably and tragically documented in this book. Whenever we try to understand how some highly questionable therapeutic policies have been recommended at the highest levels of public health authorities (WHO, CDC, RKI etc.), we frequently discover either embarrassing conflicts of interests, or the lack of essential control experiments, and always the strict rejection of any open debate with authoritative scientists presenting dissident views of the pathological processes. Virus mania is a social disease of our highly developed society. To cure it will require conquering fear, fear being the most deadly contagious virus, most efficiently transmitted by the media.
Errare humanum est sed diabolicum preservare … (to err is human, but to preserve an error is diabolic).
Prof. Dr. Etienne de Harven, MD, was a pioneer in virology. He was a professor of pathology at the University of Toronto and member of the Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, New York. He was member of Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS Advisory Panel of South Africa and president of Rethinking AIDS (www.rethinkaids.net). Etienne de Harven died in 2019 at the age of 82.
“Virus Mania” is an essential compendium of scientifically referenced information that, for anyone with a truly open mind, has the capacity to dissolve decades of brainwashing around germs as the primary cause of disease. With a tour through media-making scary viruses including HIV, swine flu, and coronavirus, the truth is laid bare that propaganda, financial incentives, and consensus dogma have driven our understanding of human vulnerability to infection and contagion ... not properly conducted science or facts. Empower yourself with the truth about these “epidemics” and never take the fear bait from mainstream media and orthodox scientists again!
Dr. Kelly Brogan, MD, is a holistic psychiatrist, author of the New York Times bestselling book “A Mind of Your Own,” and co-editor of the landmark textbook “Integrative Therapies for Depression.” She completed her psychiatric training at New York University Medical Center after graduating from Cornell University Medical College, and has a Bachelor of Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in Systems Neuroscience. She is specialized in a root-cause resolution approach to psychiatric syndromes and symptoms.
Since the World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic proclamation in March, 2020, we have been facing an uprecedented global psychological operation attempting to completely change our culture, government, food system, health system, transportation, financial system, and all other systems and aspects of our life. This attempt to take over the world is principally justified on the basis of a completely imaginary virus. In order to address this situation, the most important issue to research right now is examining the primary evidence for the claim that this virus, or any other virus, causes disease.
People across the world have readily accepted and complied with tyrannical measures reducing their own freedom for the sake of safety from a nanometer-sized particle. Once we carefully decode the methodologies used to discover so-called pathologic viruses and show their relationship to disease, we can see through the scientific misconception and outright fraud. Only after this skeptical analysis can we truly be free to search out the actual causes of illness and avoid the traps of arbitrary public health measures at the expense of our basic freedom and dignity. The book “Virus Mania” is an invaluable tool on this quest for truth since it is the world’s most comprehensive critical analysis of viral dogma.
Dr. Andrew Kaufman, MD, is a physician-scientist, natural healing consultant, inventor, public speaker, forensic psychiatrist, and expert witness. He completed his psychiatric training at Duke University Medical Center after graduating from the Medical University of South Carolina, and has a Bachelor of Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in Biology (cell and molecular). Kaufman has also published original scientific research and held leadership positions in academic medicine and professional organizations, such as The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.
“We had accepted some half-truths and had stopped searching for the whole
truths. The principal half-truths were that medical research had stamped out
the great killers of the past—tuberculosis, diphtheria, pneumonia, puerperal
sepsis, etc.—and that medical research and our superior system of medical
care were major factors in extending life expectancy. The data on deaths
from tuberculosis show that the mortality rate from this disease has been
declining steadily since the middle of the 19th century and has continued to
decline in almost linear fashion during the past 100 years [till 1970]. There
were increases in rates of tuberculosis during wars and under specified
adverse local conditions. The poor and the crowded always came off worst of
all in war and in peace, but the overall decline in deaths from tuberculosis
was not altered measurably by the discovery of the tuberculosis bacillus,
the advent of the tuberculin test, the appearance of BCG vaccination, the
widespread use of mass screening, the intensive anti-tuberculosis campaigns,
or the discovery of streptomycin. It is important that this point be understood
in its completeness. The point was made years ago by Wade Hamptom Frost,
and more recently by René Dubos, and has been repeatedly stressed through
the years by many observers of the public health. Similar trends in mortality
have been reported with respect to diphtheria, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever,
pertussis, measles, and many others.“1 2
Edward H. Kass, Harvard physician and founding member and
first president of the Infectious Disease Society of America
The founding of The Royal Society in 1660 caused a tectonic shift in Western medicine. A group of British scientists decided that what counts is “the experimental proof” not speculative fantasy, superstition and blind faith.3 4 The Royal Society called this basic research principle “nullius in verba,”5 which essentially means “Don’t just trust what someone says.” In that era, it was still common to accuse women of witchcraft “in the name of God” and burn them at the stake, or to subjugate entire peoples such as the Aztecs or Mayans to Western ideologies. Setting a standard of scientific proof marked the end of the dark ages and had enormous long-term consequences.
Today, considering ourselves enlightened and in the safe hands of our high-tech scientific culture, we look back with misgivings and great discomfort at the abuses of power that occurred in such draconian times. Indeed, the dream that science promises with its principle of proof—namely to free people from ignorance, superstition, tyranny, and not least from physical and psychological suffering—has, in many cases, particularly in wealthy countries, become a reality.6 Airplanes, tractors, computers, bionic limbs—all these achievements are the product of scientific research. Like our modern legal system, bound by the principle of evidence, science recognizes only one guiding principle: provable fact.
Our enthusiasm for scientific achievements has risen immeasurably. We have granted a godlike status to researchers and doctors, who still had the status of slaves in ancient Rome and even until the early 20th century were mostly poor and powerless.7 Because of this status, we continue to perceive them as selfless truth-seekers.8 The English biologist Thomas Huxley, a powerful supporter of Charles Darwin and grandfather of the author Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, 1932), described this phenomenon as early as the late 19th century, when he compared science’s growing authority to the Church’s position of power. For this, he coined the term “Church Scientific.”9 10
Today’s enlightened civilized individual believes so firmly in the omnipotence of scientists that they no longer question the evidence for certain hypotheses or even whether they make sense. Instead, citizens rely on the latest sensationalized media coverage churned out in daily newspapers and TV newscasts about world-threatening viral epidemics (Corona/COVID-19, swine flu, avian flu, SARS, HIV/AIDS, etc.). For many decades, the media (and scientific reporters above all) have intently cultivated friendly relationships with researchers in the drive to scoop their competitors for provocative headlines. “We scientific reporters all too often serve as living applause for our subject,” New York Times reporter Natalie Angier says critically about her profession. “Sometimes we write manuscripts that sound like unedited press releases.”11
Journalists usually assume that scientists engage in rigorous studies and disseminate only provable facts—and that rare instances of fraud will quickly be driven out of the hallowed halls of research. It’s an ideal picture, but one that has nothing to do with reality.12 13 14 15 16 17 Uncountable billions of dollars are transformed into “scientific” hypotheses, which are ultimately packaged and hawked by pharmaceutical companies, researchers, health advocates and journalists alike as the ultimate conclusions of truth. In actuality, these theories are often mere speculation, proven false and years later, finally discarded.
“The more willing the people are, the more promises must be made,” warned Erwin Chargaff as early as 1978. “A quick route to long life, freedom from all diseases, a cure for cancer—soon, perhaps the elimination of death—and what then?” asked the co-founder of biochemical research and gene-technology, and a repeatedly decorated professor at Columbia University’s Biochemical Institute in New York. “But no singer would ever have to promise to make me a better person if I would just listen to her trills.”18
Since the end of the 1970s, this situation has dramatically worsened.19 Just as in politics and economics, we in research are also “bombarded, saturated, harried by fraud,“ writes renowned science historian Horace Judson,20 whose analyses are corroborated by a number of relevant studies.21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 “There is widespread and organized crime in the drug industry,” states Peter C. Gøtzsche, professor of medicine, longtime director of the world-renowned Nordic Cochrance Center and author of the book “Deadly Medicine and Organised Crime.”32
“From a global viewpoint, there is corruption at all levels of the public health service, from health ministries to patients—and there are almost no limits to criminal imagination,” maintains Transparency International, an institution for protection against corruption, in its annual “Global Corruption Report 2006” (focus on health services).33
A close look at this data reveals that our scientific culture is ruled by secretiveness, privilege-granting and lack of accountability, and suffers from a blatant lack of monitoring, often motivated by the prospects that these companies and researchers will make exorbitant profits. All of these questionable factors contribute to the potential for researcher bias and fraud, jeopardizing the scientific proof principle introduced in the 17th century.34 “Judson paints a dark picture of [biomedical] science today, but we may see far darker days ahead as proof and profit become inextricably mixed,“ warns the medical publication Lancet.35
Even when one theoretically assumes ideal researchers and ideal studies, it must be emphasized that medicine remains (is still) a “science of uncertainties,”36 expressed William Osler (1849-1919), regarded as the father of modern medicine.37 Nothing has changed.
Donald Miller, Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington, warns that with today’s medical research, “scientific standards of proof are not uniform and well defined, in contrast to legal standards. Standards of measurement, ways of reporting and evaluating results, and particular types of experimental practices vary. Science prizes objective certainty. But science does not uniformly adhere to this standard. Subjective opinions and consensus among scientists often supersede the stricture of irrefutability.”38
Table 1 Examples for Methods for Pharmaceutical Companies to Get the Results from Clinical Trials They Want
| Conduct a trial of your drug against a treatment known to be inferior.Trial your drugs against too low a dose of a competitor drug. |
Use multiple endpoints (survival time, reduction of blood pressure, etc.) in the trial and select for publication those that give favorable results. |
| Conduct a scientific trial of your drug against too high a dose of a competitor drug (making your drug seem less toxic or deadly). |
Conduct trials that are too small to show differences from competitor drugs. Do multicenter trials and select for publication results from centers that are favorable. |
Source: Smith, Richard, Medical Journals Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies, Plos Medicine, May 2005, p. e138
To effectively combat this systemic problem, much would be gained if it were compulsory to have certain studies replicated, thus reviewing them for their soundness.39 But, according to Judson, “replication, once an important element in science, is no longer an effective deterrent to fraud because the modern biomedical research system is structured to prevent replication—not to ensure it.” Such verification is unattractive, because it doesn’t promise gigantic profits, but might only produce similar results to the original research, which is unlikely to be published by a medical journal.40 But from time to time, these reviews are carried out, with stunning results.
At the beginning of 2005, an investigation disclosed a severely flawed study leading to the approval of viramune, a globally-touted AIDS treatment.41 The follow-up investigation found that records of severe side effects including deaths were simply swept under the carpet.
At the same time, chief investigator Jonathan Fishbein was greatly hindered, from the highest levels of the National Institutes of Health, in his bid for clarification. The medical system, according to Fishbein, is shaped more by politics of interest, partisanship and intrigue than by sound science. Fishbein called the government’s AIDS research agency “a troubled organization,” referring to an internal review that found its managers had engaged in unnecessary feuding, sexually explicit language and other inappropriate conduct.42 43
How far this can go becomes apparent when research produced by individual scientists is placed under the microscope. The South Korean veterinarian Hwang Woo Suk, for example, published a paper in the journal Science in May 2005 in which he described how he had extracted human stem cells from cloned embryos for the first time. The work was celebrated as a “global sensation” and Hwang as a “cloning pioneer.” But at the end of 2005, it was discovered that Hwang had completely forged his experiments.44 45
The medical field is ultimately about illness, dying and death. Naturally, these experiences involve a complex and nuanced range of emotions for individuals, their loved ones and doctors. The process makes us extremely receptive to a belief in salvation through miracle treatments. In this, researchers and physicians take over the roles of priests; the white smock has merely replaced the black robes and black wigs physicians used to wear.46
These white knights proclaim their healing messages, and of course require “victims” to carry out their research with billions of dollars of government, i.e. taxpayer funded dollars. “Indeed, so profound is our belief in the cures of science” that it has become “the new secular theology of the 20th century,”47 according to American media scientist Michael Tracey. “This belief is so inherent within us that we construct any problem, grievance, pain, or fear in conceptual terms that not only allow us to seek the cure, but demand that we do so.”48
At the heart of this web of feelings and wishes are the fantasies of almightiness that further prop up the medical-industrial complex. This ever more powerful part of the global economy consists of pharmaceutical companies worth billions, their lobbyists and spin doctors, and an immense army of highly-paid researchers and doctors. In the process, we’ve turned our bodies into vehicles of consumerism, internalizing a highly-questionable promise inherent to this industry: Science can conquer terrible and puzzling diseases—just like we conquered the moon—if it is just given enough money.49
To avoid any misunderstandings: medicine has made tremendous achievements. This applies first and foremost to reparative medicine such as accident surgery, organ transplants and laser eye surgery. But, the various perils of modern medicine are all-too evident in the ever-expanding field of so-called preventive and curative treatments, particularly the growing arsenal of pharmaceutical drugs—in other words, medicine that purports to be able to heal.50
Take cancer, for example. In 1971, US President Richard Nixon at the behest of public health officials (and above all, virologists), declared a “War on Cancer.” The medical establishment vowed there would be a cure at hand by 1975.51 But we are still waiting. And there is “no evidence of the way cancer comes into being,” according to German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum).52 Mainstream cancer theories also show blatant contradictions.53 Despite this, hundreds of billions of dollars have already flowed into a completely one-sided cancer research focused on wonder-drug production. Above all, this set-up generates gigantic profits for pharmaceutical companies, researchers and doctors.
In contrast, plausible alternative theories (which may be less profitable, because they focus on lifestyle and environmental factors and not only on fatefully appearing genes and viruses as causes) remain almost completely disregarded.54 55 For instance, although official cancer theories assume that a third of cancer cases could be prevented through a change of diet (above all more fruit and vegetables and less meat),56 cancer expert Samuel Epstein points out that the American National Cancer Institute spent “just $1 million—that is 0.02 percent of its $4.7 billion budget in 2005—on education, press work and public relations to encourage eating fruit and vegetables to prevent cancer.”57
At the same time, the number of people who die from “non-smoking” cancers has noticeably increased since Nixon’s 1971 call to battle (even, it is worth noting, when one takes into consideration that people on average have become older).58 In Germany more than 200,000 people still die from this terrible disease annually; in the USA there are around 600,000 cancer deaths per year.59
The situation doesn’t look any better for other widespread illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, or rheumatism. In spite of exorbitant research budgets, the development of a cure is unforeseeable. Cortisone, for instance, does help to alleviate acute rheumatic or allergic discomfort—but only during the cortisone therapy. If treatment is discontinued, suffering returns. At the same time, cortisone, which also finds plenty of use in the treatment of viruses, is, like most reputed miracle cures (aka “magic bullets”), connected with severe side effects.60
Vera Sharav of the New York City-based Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP), an organization that fights for independent and ethically responsible medical science, warns that “often enough, the medications are so toxic that they produce precisely the diseases against which, as the pharmaceutical manufacturers’ advertising messages aim to convince us, they are supposed to be so active. And then, new preparation after new preparation is given.”61
As relevant studies reveal, drug toxicities are so severe that the American “health” industry’s pill craze is responsible for about 800,000 deaths each year, more than any illness (including cancer and heart attack). And in Germany, tens of thousands of people are estimated to die each year due to improper treatment and prescription of incorrect medications (there are no exact figures because certain interest groups have successfully resisted the collection of the relevant information).62 As Peter C. Gøtzsche, professor of medicine, points out: “Our prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in the United States and Europe.”63
The fact that a society calling itself enlightened is nevertheless dominated by the belief that there is a healing pill for every little ache and pain or serious complaint is substantially due to the persuasive craftiness of Big Pharma. Pharmaceutical companies operating in the US spend approximately a third of their expenses on marketing, which means that dozens of billions US dollars per year are invested in advertising their preparations as miracle cures to doctors, journalists, consumers and politicians.64 With this, they have extended their sphere of influence in a most alarming way to include institutions like the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the independence and integrity of which is particularly important.65 66 67 68
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in April 2006, showed that “conflicts of interest at the FDA are widespread.” It was shown that in 73 percent of meetings, at least one member of the consulting team in question had conflicts of interest: being remunerated by Big Pharma, for instance, through consultation fees, research contracts or grants, or stock ownership or options. In nearly a quarter of contracts and grants sums of more than $100,000 changed hands. The study found that these conflicts of interest influenced voting behavior: When panel members with conflicts of interest were excluded from voting, the judgment of the product in question was much less favorable. And even though these conflicts of interest were so extensive, panel members with relevant conflicts of interest were disqualified in only 1 percent of cases.69 70
“Big Pharma money and advertising not only influence the perception of illness, the demand for drugs, and the practice of medicine, but government budgets, including health service and oversight agencies have become dependent on Big Pharma money,” says Vera Sharav of the AHRP. “An out of the box analysis opened our eyes to a fundamental conflict of interest that has never been discussed. Public health policies are not merely influenced by Big Pharma; they are formulated so as to increase industry’s profits because government budgets are tied to this industry’s profits.” In this context, a decisive event occurred in 1992 when the US Congress waved through the “Prescription Users Fees Act” (PDUFA), which established the “fast track drug approval service.” According to Sharav, “the FDA has received $825 million in industry ‘user fees’,” and “other government agencies have similarly become financially dependent on Big Pharma.”71
The issue stirred up so much controversy that the British Parliament also opened an extensive investigation. Their conclusions: the pharmaceutical industry’s corrupt practices and its massive influence upon parliaments, authorities, universities, health professionals and the media were sharply criticized.72
In fact, “if prescription medicines are so good, why do they need to be pushed so hard?“ asks Marcia Angell, former Editor in Chief of the well-known New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). “Good drugs don’t have to be promoted.”73 Her opinions are as simple as they are revealing, but unfortunately they don’t register in the consciousness of the modern believer in science. Our society that considers itself particularly enlightened has become senselessly “overmedicated.”74
This pill-mania exists because we have a distorted comprehension of what causes diseases—a comprehension that has been able to lodge itself firmly in our thought processes over a period of more than 100 years.75 To understand this, one must look back to the middle of the 19th century, when a true paradigm shift in the way we see disease occurred. There was an about-turn, away from a complex, holistic view concerning how diseases originate, to a monocausal and “one-dimensional” mindset, to use a term from philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Through this, a false awareness arose “which is immune to its falseness” because the dimensions of self-criticism and the ability to look in various alternative directions is missing.76
This paradigm shift is largely due to the fact that from approximately the 16th century, in the course of the Enlightenment, the natural sciences began to develop rapidly, and put the population under their spell with descriptions of very specific phenomena. One need only remember the tremendous achievements of the English physicist Isaac Newton, who described gravitation; or the invention of the steam locomotive or even the printing press.
But in the euphoric exuberance of progress, particularly from the middle of the 19th century, this thought pattern of specificity—that very particular chemical or physical phenomena have very specific causes—was simply transferred to the medical sciences. Many researchers and interest groups didn’t even consider if this actually made sense.77
The dogma of a single cause for diseases was decisively shaped by microbiology, which became predominant at the end of the 19th century, declaring specific microorganisms (viruses, bacteria, fungi) to be the causes of very definite diseases; including mass epidemics such as cholera and tuberculosis.78 The founders of microbe theory, researchers Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, ascended in their lifetimes to the heights of medicine’s Mount Olympus.
With the microbe theory, the “cornerstone was laid for modern biomedicine’s basic formula with its monocausal-microbial starting-point and its search for magic bullets: one disease, one cause, one cure,“ writes American sociology professor, Steven Epstein.79
From the end of the 19th century, the hunt for microbes increasingly provided the thrill, and the same admiration that physicists and chemists had earlier garnered (as in Paris in 1783, when the brothers Montgolfier performed the “miracle” of launching a hot air balloon into the sky).80
But as fascinating as this conception of a single cause is, it has very little to do with the complex workings of the human body. A significant majority of diseases have far more than just one cause, so the search for the single cause of disease, and by extension for the one miracle-pill, will remain for them a hopeless undertaking.81 This is particularly true in microbiology, a “scientific No Man’s Land,”82 as the American magazine The New Yorker fittingly described it. The field is becoming ever more complex and incomprehensible, as further research penetrates the seemingly infinite microcosmic mini-worlds of cellular components, molecules and microbes.
Bacteria, fungi and viruses are omnipresent—in the air, in our food, in our mucous membranes—but we aren’t permanently sick.83 When a disease generally held to be contagious “breaks out,” only some individuals become sick. This is clear evidence that microbes, whatever potential they may have to make you sick, cannot be the lone cause of disease.
848586 87 88 89