official - HIV scientific papers riddled with Errors

an extract from Fear of the Invisible

Senior Investigators - 'HIV scientific papers riddled with Errors'

The CDC, America's foremost disease control institution, currently acknowledges: ‘Four papers from Dr Gallo's laboratory, demonstrating that HTLV-III retrovirus was the cause of AIDS, were published in Science in May 1984'.

I needed to understand these key experiments - and this task would surely be made easier since, not only did I have the Science papers, but the related laboratory documents unearthed by the above scientific and Congressional investigations and by John Crewdson. These included original research notebooks, drafts of key papers, laboratory correspondence, all relating to the discovery of HIV. It was a priceless resource that would surely give me all I needed.

I soon discovered that there had been astonishingly five major investigations between 1990 and 1995 into possible fraud in Gallo's HIV research, several of these overlapping with the others. The first was the one that I have already mentioned, run by the NIH's Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI) and the Richard's Panel. Its goals, set in October 1990, were to focus ‘particularly' on the integrity of the first of the four papers published in Science in May 1984, the one on which Popovic was the lead author, since this paper described the key experiments cited in the application for a Patent on the HIV Test.

The second inquiry was under a powerful Congressional Investigative Sub-Committee headed by Rep. John Dingell. It would prevent key documents from being shredded by the NIH. The third was under the Inspector General of the Department of Health and examined criminal fraud in the ‘HIV Test' patent application. The fourth was under the Office of Research Integrity of the Department of Health and Human Resources and looked for fraud, deception and ‘scientific misconduct' in the Gallo Science papers. And the fifth and last was by the US Secret Service, the body normally charged with safeguarding the security of the US President. It would check the related laboratory documents in the finest forensic lab in Washington. If any were forged, it would find out.

All together, this was by far the most formidable governmental investigation into the honesty of scientific research ever undertaken. Clearly the issues at stake were considered extremely important. But Gallo was by now no little scientist. By 1990 he was the head of an NIH laboratory with an annual budget of around $12 million, and his annual salary was over $200,000. In a letter he sent around this time, he described himself as ‘the most cited scientist in the world for the decade of the 1980s.' He had in truth become enormously influential.

One of the first press reports on these inquiries was in the Chicago Tribune of February 25th, 1990. The headline was ‘U.S. agency probing AIDS virus discovery.' It said ‘The inquiry is examining much of the related research conducted in recent years by Dr. Robert C. Gallo, the nation's most prominent AIDS researcher.'

But, from contemporary press reports, Gallo's laboratory was not as upright as might be expected. A newspaper report of 29th April 1990 stated: ‘A 16-month congressional inquiry [by Dingell into Gallo's laboratory] has uncovered evidence suggesting that rare and valuable viruses, among them the AIDS virus, were appropriated' and sold privately. HTLV-3 [HIV] went on the black market for a price of around $1000 a milligram. The person suspected was Syed Zaki Salahuddin, ‘one of Gallo's long-time assistants.' He was also the lead author of one of the four Science papers of May 4th, 1984.

On May 1st 1990 this investigation further found that ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars in government equipment and supplies cannot be accounted for by scientists at the National Cancer Institute' and that a million dollars had been paid to a company partly owned by Salahuddin and his wife. He was later found guilty and sentenced to pay back $12,000 and do 1,750 hours of community service.

I soon learnt, from the OSI investigation records, that Gallo had confessed to it in 1990 that he had not found the AIDS virus in 1982, as reported in the Science papers. He admitted to it that he had only detected the enzyme RT in 1982, and had not found the virus itself. The investigators reported that he had lied when he claimed he did ‘more than fifty' detections and produced ‘ten true isolates' of the AIDS virus in 1982. They concluded that he did not find the virus before 1984.

But, in the apparent belief that people have forgotten this confession, Gallo is now astonishingly repeatedly making the same claim - that he found HIV in 1982 before anyone else. He did so in his recent bookand he did so, even most seriously, in sworn testimony in 2007 to an Australian court. (More on this below.) So for me, discovering his earlier confession was something of a shock.

In 1990-91 more evidence of wrongdoing in Gallo's lab surfaced in the OSI investigation into his HIV research. But at this point the new head of the NIH, Bernardine Healy, intervened. She hauled in Gallo, subjected him to a severe dressing down; laying down that in future he would not be able to absent himself from laboratory duties without permission, nor even publish a paper or give an interview without permission. Then, after hopefully silencing him, she turned her attention to the OSI.

The OSI chief, Suzanne Hadley, was then drafting the final OSI report and about to conclude that Gallo's chief investigative scientist, Mikulas Popovic, the primary author of the most significant of the four Science papers, had falsified the data in this paper - and to recommend that he be condemned for scientific misconduct.

But, when Popovic heard of this, in desperation he had produced long-hidden key evidence. He gave Hadley a 1984 typed draft of the key Science paper that he had kept hidden overseas. Among other things, this draft revealed that Robert Gallo had extensively changed this paper at the last moment to hide their use of the French virus.

With this it seemed the evidence was at hand to prove Gallo guilty of illegal use of the French virus and thus of scientific deceit. Hadley composed her OSI report accordingly. She concluded: ‘Dr. Gallo has claimed credit for the Popovic et al. paper and the other 1984 papers, so must he bear responsibility for the falsehoods in the Popovic et al. paper. Accordingly the OSI finds that Dr Robert Gallo engaged in scientific misconduct.'

This was a damning conclusion. This OSI report now should have gone to the Richards Panel for review - but at this point Healy intervened, removing Haley from her duties at the OSI. The indictment of Gallo was deleted from her report.

But the watered down report that was published after her departure was still highly critical of Gallo. It accused him of ‘an unhealthy disregard for accepted standards of professional and scientific ethics.' It included her findings that Dr. Gallo must share responsibility with Dr. Popovic for ‘imprecise and non-meticulous science', and that Gallo's alteration of a key 1983 Institut Pasteur paper prior to publication was a ‘gratuitous, self-serving, and improper act.' (Gallo had served as Peer Reviewer for a Pasteur Institute paper on the AIDS virus - and had unilaterally changed it prior to publication!) But the report then strangely concluded that none of this was ‘scientific misconduct!' This conclusion seems to have been added without any consideration of what the report actually documented. On the issue of whether Gallo stole the French virus, the report now came to no conclusion.

But the accusations would not go away. The Chicago Tribune was able to report on August 11, 1991: ‘Dr. Robert C. Gallo, the government's most prominent AIDS researcher ... made untrue and misleading statements in a sworn declaration defending the patent from a legal challenge by French scientists.'

into the 1984 article by Robert C. Gallo which reported the isolation of the AIDS virus concludes that this report is riddled with fabrication, falsification, misleading statements and errors.' This was astonishing. The report of which it spoke is the very scientific article that is cited today as establishing for all time that HIV causes AIDS - the first of the four published by Gallo et al in Science in May 1984. If eminent scientific bodies found it so riddled with errors, then why is it still cited?

Possibly because, when these investigations commenced, about a billion dollars had already been invested in ‘HIV infection' prevention and related research. There was thus much riding on the credibility of these foundation papers of HIV research.

A year after these investigations commenced, pressure had really started to mount on Gallo and Popovic. The NIH decision to remove Suzanne Hadley, the Head of the OSI inquiry, had proved so controversial that a new inquiry had to be set up independent of the NIH to complete the work. It was to be managed by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) of the Department of Health in the President George Bush Administration. The ORI asked the scientists previously working with the NIH inquiry to assist them- saying, if they found reason to present charges against Gallo or Popovic, these would be sent to a departmental legal committee for assessment and action.

The talk of an NIH cover-up to protect Gallo's AIDS research that year also reached Representative Dingell, the head of the powerful Congressional Investigative sub-committee that had previously indicted a scientist working in Gallo's lab for theft, as I mentioned above. Dingell now immediately ordered the OSI files on Gallo and Popovic moved to his office - and asked the NIH for the services of Hadley. It could not refuse him - so she resumed her investigation but now with considerably greater Congressional investigative powers. An aide to Dingell explained: 'Everything Hadley has told us has checked out 100% against documents the committee has received from NIH. She's obviously been treated very shabbily.'

That year Gallo also got into trouble in Africa. His laboratory had developed a vaccine based on transplanting into the shell of another virus a putative part of HIV. It seems this was easier than using HIV itself as it was difficult to find. This vaccine was injected into a few Congolese in Africa and Paris and three of them died. It was then discovered that his vaccine had only been approved for use on animals! But Gallo escaped with only a mild reprimand.

In May 1991, knowing what the OSI was about to deliver its report, Gallo wrote to Nature, confessing that he now realised that the French virus and his own were the same. He blamed his error on inadvertent laboratory contamination. Then a similar confession appeared in the UK from a leading British virologist and colleague of Robert Gallo, Dr. Robin Weiss, the scientist I had first met when he was chairing the NIH workshop on SV40, and again when he was chairing the Royal Society debate on the polio vaccine and HIV.

Weiss now confessed that the AIDS virus he claimed to isolate in 1985, a year after Gallo, was in fact the very same one that the Institut Pasteur had sent him earlier. Like Gallo, his explanation was inadvertent laboratory contamination. He also, like Gallo, had used the French virus to secure a UK patent for the HIV test.

By now Dingell was pushing for a criminal investigation into Gallo's AIDS research - and was angry at the ‘waffling by the Bush Administration' that his efforts met. Charges were justified, he maintained, since ‘a landmark 1984 article in which Gallo reported isolating the AIDS virus contains falsified data.'

Then another damning report appeared. The Richards Panel, set up to supervise the OSI investigation, had decided not to let the matter rest after NIH produced the watered-down OSI report. They were mindful that they had been appointed by two of the most important scientific bodies in the USA - and therefore had a duty to report honestly what they had discovered.

They issued their own report in January 1992. It stated there was ‘a pattern of behaviour on Dr. Gallo's part that repeatedly misrepresents, suppresses, and distorts data and their interpretation in such a way as to enhance Dr. Gallo's claim to priority.' They said his failure to acknowledge his use of the French virus represented ‘intellectual recklessness of a high degree' in the ‘intellectual appropriation of the French viral isolate...'

In February 1992 the Chicago Tribune reported a government investigation had discovered ‘a landmark 1984 article reporting Robert C. Gallo's isolation of the AIDS virus contains numerous falsifications of data and misrepresentations of the methods employed.'

In April 1992, a Prime Time television investigation stated: ‘It may be the greatest scientific fraud of the twentieth century.' It continued over a portrait of Gallo: ‘Eight years ago this man was hailed as the genius who discovered the AIDS virus.' But now it was a story ‘of how a fight for wealth and glory can interfere with the desperate attempt to conquer a deadly disease.'

In July that year, another member of Gallo's laboratory was found guilty of a federal crime. This time it was Prem Sarin, the second in charge of his laboratory for more than a decade. He had embezzled $25,000 that should have been spent on AIDS research.

When Dingell in late 1992 discovered he was missing some of the Gallo research documents, he sought to discover why. He wrote on 24th November 1992 to the Director of the NIH: ‘we have received reliable information that documents from the Gallo/Popovic investigation were being shredded at the NIH's Office of Scientific Integrity.' He continued ‘NIH's actions...show a clear pattern of obstruction and attempted deception ... particularly when juxtaposed with the curious diligence the NIH showed in its efforts to seek out and destroy the person or persons suspected of blowing the whistle on the shredding.'

A year later President Clinton gave the NIH a new director, Dr. Harold Varmus, a scientist of great repute who was not inclined to protect Gallo. In June 1993 the Chicago Tribune reported that ‘the government's long-running case against its star AIDS researcher, Dr. Robert C. Gallo, has been expanded to include a broader range of misconduct surrounding his decade-old claim to have discovered the cause of AIDS.'

The ORI by now had drawn up a powerful Indictment (‘Offer of Proof') against Gallo and Popovic. This it presented to the Department of Health's lawyer-based 'Research Integrity Adjudication Panel'. It was broad ranging and powerful. Here are some excerts:



§ 'Research process can proceed with confidence only if scientists can assume that the previously reported facts on which their work is based are correct. If the bricks are in fact false...then the scientific wall of truth may crumble...Such actions threaten the very integrity of the scientific process.'



§ 'In light of the groundbreaking nature of this research and its profound public health implications, ORI believes that the careless and unacceptable keeping of research records [for proving HIV the cause of AIDS by Gallo and his team] ...reflects irresponsible laboratory management that has permanently impaired the ability to retrace the important steps taken. '



§ [This] 'put the public health at risk and, at the minimum, severely undermined the ability of the scientific community to reproduce and/or verify the efforts of the LTCB [Gallo's 'Laboratory for Tumor Cell Biology'] in isolating and growing the AIDS virus.'



§ 'Gallo's failings as a Lab Chief are evidenced in the Popovic Science paper, a paper conspicuously lacking in significant primary data and fraught with false and erroneous statements.'



§ Gallo 'repeatedly misrepresents distorts and suppresses data in such a way as to enhance his own claim to priority and primacy in AIDS research.'



§ 'The [lead] Science paper contains numerous falsifications... the paper was replete with at least 22 incorrect statements concerning LTCB research, at least 11 of which were falsifications amounting to serious deviations from accepted standards for conducting and reporting evidence.' Some of the captions to micrographs, descriptions of experiments and enclosed tables were 'false and misleading'.



§ 'The absence of virtually any assay data for the parent cell line is simply unbelievable. [Especially since this was] used to develop and patent the HIV antibody blood test.'



§ Gallo, 'in violation of all research protocols, impeded scientists wanting to follow up on his research ... imposed on others the condition that they did not try to repeat his work.'



This is only a selection from an absolutely devastating indictment.

The Adjudication Panel, to which this indictment was submitted for action, was made up of lawyers not scientists. It decided to first consider the case of Popovic - and came to an amazing conclusion. They fully accepted that Popovic had published careless inaccurate and deceptive research, but still deemed him ‘innocent' since the 'intent to deceive' had not been proved. They finished by astonishingly praising Popovic's research as published in Science in May 1984 as important for all time.

This utterly shocked the scientists who had helped produce the ORI report. Their indictment had been supported with the testimony of over 100 scientists, and they had been expressly directed not to try to prove ‘intent' in their indictment. How could the Panel now absolve Popovic from blame on the grounds they had not tried to prove ‘intent'? How could they absolve him of responsibility while accepting their conclusion that the key research he did on HIV was deeply flawed, contained false statements, and might have sent AIDS research off in the wrong direction? Furthermore, how could an Adjudication Panel made up solely of lawyers conclude by praising this research, when they as scientists had condemned it? They wondered darkly just who had advised the lawyers?

The Panel was next to consider the case of Robert Gallo - but in face of the decision on Popovic, the ORI in disgust felt it had no choice but to drop its attempt to find Gallo guilty of scientific misconduct since they had been misdirected over the need to prove ‘intent'. They nevertheless declared their ‘fundamental disagreement' with the Panel's understanding of ‘the importance of clarity, accuracy and honesty in science,'

But Gallo was not yet clear. The Secret Service now presented the evidence they had unearthed to the Dingell Inquiry. They had been charged to examine for fraud the laboratory documents that Gallo had presented as legal evidence. They had discovered that many were ‘fixed' before being presented. Documents written on different dates were changed on the same day. They found incriminating overlapping imprints of the changes on the enclosing folders.

This was the clearest evidence of criminal fraud and was immediately presented to the State Attorney General in January 1994 in the expectation that a criminal prosecution would now be ordered, but he ruled it was ‘out of time'. Too long had elapsed under the Statute of Limitations since the fraud was carried out. Gallo thus may have escaped prosecution on a technicality.

But the investigators were not content to leave it there. Hadley and others went to see Varmus, the new Director of the NIH, to present the new damning evidence, including more now produced by the Inspector General's Inquiry on fraud in the Patent application for the HIV test. The Inspector General had even expressed doubts on whether the related experiments were ever done! The Patent Examiner also now acknowledged ‘had she been aware of (the French AIDS test research) at the time she examined the blood test application of Gallo, she would have suspended Gallo's application.'

Varmus was persuaded - and had to act. In June 1994 Gallo was given a choice: prepare to leave the NIH - or face a new investigation that might be harder to escape from unscathed. He decided to leave - in a year's time. It was then headlined on July 12th that: ‘US, France settle AIDS virus dispute. The NIH will give up millions in profit from Test Patent.' The Financial Times reported: ‘US climb down in feud with the French over AIDS research.' The NIH had at last acknowledged that there was justice in the French claim against them as the employer of Gallo.

However the Dingell Investigation never reached a formal conclusion. When the Republican Party took control of the House of Representatives at the end of 1994, Dingell lost his chairmanship of the investigating sub-committee -and the Republicans promptly killed the investigation of the Reagan-endorsed Robert Gallo. However Dingell's staff would have none of this. They did not want their years of research wasted, so they issued an unofficial final 'Staff Report' of 267 pages, detailing their findings. Their report might not have been official, but it received a highly favourable review in the top UK medical journal, the Lancet.

The Chicago Tribune summarised the Staff Report's findings in two scathing pieces, one on 1st January 1995 entitled ‘In Gallo Case, Truth deemed a Casualty' and the other an editorial on 6th January entitled: ‘Defending the Indefensible Dr. Gallo'.



This Staff Report had reported:



§ 'The cover-up ... advanced to a more active phase in mid-March 1984, when Dr. Gallo systematically rewrote the manuscript for what would become a renowned LTCB paper (Popovic et al.; Science).' [LTCB stood for Gallo's Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology]



§ 'The evidence is compelling that the oft-repeated [HIV] isolate claim - ... dating from 1982/early 1983, are not true and were known to be untrue at the time the claims were made.'



§ 'Many of the samples allegedly used for the pool [the supposed HIV culture] were noted in the LTCB records to be contaminated with mould.'



§ 'The notion that Dr. Popovic used such samples in an effort to obtain a high-titre virus-producing cell line defies credulity.'



§ 'The [early] February 1984 experiment was so faulty and so many aspects of it so questionable, that little or no confidence can be placed in any of its claimed findings.'



§ 'Contrary to the claims of Gallo and Popovic, including claims in their patent applications [for the HIV Blood Test], several of the putative pool samples contained no HIV, while others did not even come from AIDS or pre-AIDS patients.'



The report then concluded:



'The result was a costly, prolonged defence of the indefensible in which the LTCB 'science' became an integral element of the US government's public relations/advocacy efforts. The consequences for HIV research were severely damaging, leading, in part, to a corpus of scientific papers polluted with systematic exaggerations and outright falsehoods of unprecedented proportions.'



The report presented detailed evidence that destroyed the central claim made by Gallo in these famed Science papers; to have isolated HIV in dozens of AIDS patients in experiments conducted in 1982 and 1983. They said he did not have the tools needed to do this - and consequently could not have isolated or identified a single AIDS virus!

The Staff report also recorded that when Gallo was asked ‘to substantiate this claim' [that he had found the AIDS virus in 1982] by his immediate boss Dr Samuel Broder, the National Cancer Institute director, he had ‘responded with a list of samples, only one of which dated from 1982.' ‘When that sample was checked against records, it was found to be marked ‘N.D.' meaning ‘Not Done' - or ‘Not Determinable.' Gallo then admitted under interrogation that he had only detected the enzyme RT, not the virus, at the time. The investigators concluded; ‘No evidence was supplied that any of these samples had ever been tested and found positive for HIV. In fact no such evidence existed.' It then added that the US Secret Service found many Gallo laboratory records were falsified prior to being presented as evidence.

On May 25th 1995 came the news that ‘Dr. Robert C. Gallo, the government's best-known and most controversial AIDS researcher, is departing the National Cancer Institute after a 30-year career that included the discovery of the first human leukaemia virus and a bitter international controversy over his contribution to finding the cause of AIDS. Gallo said he plans to set up his own Institute of Human Virology in a renovated warehouse in downtown Baltimore.'

But, the Science papers he authored, despite being found scandalously fraudulent, were never withdrawn, nor corrected, which to my mind is scandalous given the prestige of the institutions that had condemned them and the consequence of leaving them uncorrected. Thus thousands of researchers still consult them in all innocence. Today thousands of papers on HIV and AIDS refer back to them, and all medical authorities point to them too. The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) still state on their website that the key foundation papers in AIDS research are ‘four papers from Dr Gallo's laboratory, demonstrating that HTLV-III retrovirus [HIV] was the cause of AIDS.' It does not mention that they were found ‘polluted with systematic exaggerations and outright falsehoods of unprecedented proportions.'

The findings of all these high level investigations of the 1990s were thus swiftly and shockingly buried. Few AIDS scientists now know that these seminal AIDS papers were thoroughly discredited by scientists belonging to the most eminent of scientific bodies. This is an extraordinary state of affairs. It is totally amazing, almost unbelievable.

It is as if these highly prestigious top-level investigations never existed - yet they only completed their work in 1995. They are now not even mentioned in the AIDS research history assembled by AVERT and referenced on the UK government's AIDS website.


See AIDS Timeline, 1981-1988, on US government health website linked on www.cdc.gov

Quoted in John Crewdson: Science Fictions page 439 fn. 37 ch 21.

Joan Shenton, Positively False, p50

Gallo stated ‘we had more than 50 detections and more than 10 true isolates of HIV-I.' Emphasis added; 4/26/90 OSI interview; transcript p. 58.

Robert Gallo. In his book Virus Hunters

John Crewdson, Chicago Tribune, Ill.: Aug 11, 1991. pg. 1

Lies, Errors Cited in article by Crewdson, John. Chicago Tribune, Ill.: Sep 15, 1991. pg. 11

Chicago Tribune, Apr 14, 1991 3 Dead in AIDS Vaccine Test

Peter Duesberg. Inventing the AIDS virus. Page 164.

Chicago Tribune, November 6th, 1991

Chicago Times of May 27th, 1992.

John Crewdson, Criminal inquiry urged in AIDS lab scandal Chicago Tribune: Nov 6, 1991

Cited in John Crewdson. Page 443.

Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1992

Chicago Tribune June 6, 1993

The Office of Research Integrity - Offers of Proof Report 1993.

Chicago Tribune U.S. INQUIRY DISCREDITS GALLO ON AIDS PATENT DIAGNOSTIC TEST. CLAIMS WERE RIDDLED BY HOLES, PROBE SAYS. June 19, 1994.

He said ‘we had more than 50 detections and more than 10 true isolates of HIV-I.'Emphasis added; 4/26/90 OSI interview; transcript p. 58.

Gallo-to-Fischinger; August 14, 1985.

The fraud uncovered by the Secret Service is extensively described in Science Fictions by John Crewdson, published by Little Brown in 2002, pages 506-510

Chicago tribune, May 25th 1995

See the Timeline published in The Scientist in November 2006. It states the credit was equally shared between Gallo and the French in 1987 - and totally omits any mention of this later high level controversy. http://www.the-scientist.com/article/flash/23586/1/

new book "Fear of the Invisible"

Janine Roberts
isbn 0955917727, amazon.com
308 pages US$19.95 UK£12.99

An Investigative Journey into a reckless and contaminated Medical Industry

This book takes its readers on a journey into the very heart of the hunt for viruses – to the key experiments performed to prove that these invisibly small particles cause diseases that often were previously blamed on toxins or bacteria. It sheds light on the extraordinary assumptions underlying much of this research into viruses – and the resulting vaccines and antiviral medicines.

The author, an investigative journalist who researched and produced investigative films for the BBC, American and Australian television, was asked by parents with children severely ill after vaccination to discover if the medical authorities were hiding anything from them. (I should add this was Jabs!) She agreed, but had no idea how long this search would take or how it would change her ideas. She expected at best to uncover a small degree of contamination.

On the ensuing decade-long journey of discovery, she found top government scientists report alarmingly, at meetings between scientists, that it is impossible to purify vaccines. They stated that the childhood vaccines of today are contaminated with viruses from chickens, humans and monkeys, with RNA and DNA fragments, with "cellular degradation products," and possibly "oncogenes and prions."

A chapter called 'The impure nature of vaccines" draws heavily on official (but previously unseen ) transcripts of meetings between top UK and USA vaccine scientists... it is shocking to hear how they talk when no journalists are around. I had always imagined that vaccines were made of viruses put into a sterile fluid - with a few other chemicals added as preservatives - like mercury... and thought this was what one had to worry about...
Well - this is untrue... the liquid used is not sterile - it is the fluid in which the viruses are drawn out of the incubator of animal, human or chicken cells... it cannot be filtered as that would remove the viruses wanted in it... so everything of the same size or smaller remains in the vaccines. These scientists all expressed grave concerns.... one of them said that if the Greens in the UK knew what they were saying, they would demand the immediate withdrawal of all vaccines! The author reports a manufacturer of MMR says the vaccine as given to children is full of cellular degradation products they cannot remove from it ... She also cites also authorities saying the manufactures cannot meet the government purity standards - even after they lowered them by a hundred times. A major US court decision in 2008 has linked autism with vaccine contamination.

Thus it is not just mercury - there are a thousand things in the vaccines. Our children mostly do not fall ill from vaccination simply because nature gifts most of them with excellent immune systems...

This book, proof read for scientific accuracy by an eminent professor of pathology, gives not just detailed quotations but also names the scientists who are saying these things - giving web links where possible so people can read the original documents for themselves. The doctors cited said that they dare not tell the pubic about all this contamination - as they might demand a withdrawal of the vaccines. Thus we are still not told despite all the consequences for long-term public health.

There is much research here that has not been reported elsewhere. This chapter cites, for example, a World Health Organization (WHO) senior scientist who said that although they have found the MMR vaccine to be widely contaminated with chicken leukosis virus, they have decided not to tell the public and to continue to permit the vaccine to be made with contaminated eggs.

The author has doubts over the full accuracy of their research, as it is based on discovering an enzyme, RT, not a virus, but these are important scientists and they say the virus is present, is very dangerous to chickens and potentially to children. But, to admit this publicly, would reveal that they cannot purify the vaccines given to our children.

A senior professor is cited as writing the vaccine program was so contaminated and chimps were used in vaccine manufacturing so widely, that HIV could easily have spread in a vaccine.

The author tells how she disturbingly discovered that the key HIV research, that said to prove that HIV causes AIDS, was investigated for scientific fraud by very powerful US scientific institutions (supervised by the US Academy of Science) and by Congress over a four year period. Why is this not widely known? It seems there has been some sort of cover-up. The book cites their conclusions, showing that they reported over twenty major errors in this research, with some errors so serious that they made it impossible to repeat these experiments and verify them! I reproduce the key documents so the reader can assess them for themselves. This is explosive material.


The author takes us to the key experiments in virology - the ones cited most widely - the ones on which our vaccines are ultimately based, and could find none in which pure samples of viruses were produced and proved to cause particular human diseases. They cannot purify viruses for use in vaccines, and it seems without such pure cultures they cannot properly research the links between viruses and diseases. Frequently the effects of toxins are misdiagnosed as the effects of viruses.

The book discusses in detail how they produce today the flu and measles virus for vaccines. The author details how measles virus is produced according to the latest CDC guidelines. The way it is done raises many issues.

Part of the book also takes the readers on a journey through various aspects of HIV theory, such as sexual transmission, the different clinical definitions of AIDS, why AIDS is said to be c aused by HIV and at the same time is said by our governments to happen in the absence of HIV, and why the HIV test picks up on different diseases in the West from in Africa. It is all heavily scientifically referenced.

In the final part is reported recent research that is revolutionizing biology and offering much hope for the future. These new developments shed new light on the relationships between our cells and viruses. They are not necessarily enemies. Readers may find these new developments will radically change the ideas they have held about viruses all their lives.

The preface is contributed by Dr Roberto Giraldo. The book has hundreds of scientific references, a scientific glossary and an index.

Do hope you find it valuable...

The true nature of Viruses

18. The true nature of viruses

In many ways, we are still at the beginning of scientific research – for we still do not have a full understanding of even what is happening inside us. The more we know of this, the more we realise just how much more there is to understand. For example, most western biologists are still left bewildered by the success of ancient Eastern medical practices such as acupressure and acupuncture.
After several years investigating the work of the “virus-hunters” I have come to the conclusion that Western medicine is being handicapped by long entrenched paradigms – in particular by the focus on understanding disease rather than health, and by the concepts that viruses are fundamentally dangerous to our survival, that they are extremely “cunning foes” (despite being “dead”) and essentially invasive.
The particles we normally label as viruses are only seen as tiny grey dots dwarfed by cells, like ants next to buffalo, even in the most powerful of electron microscopes. To get such photographs, ultra-thin slices have to be made of filtered cell cultures, the content fixed, dehydrated, stained and embedded into plastic. The resulting particles could be anything – but we then try to select out those that resemble ones that in the cell cultures appear to multiply. These we call viruses.
Why these dots cannot be seen in regular microscopes is that they are shorter than light waves. We now know they seem to be everywhere. They range in size enormously. But, they were given their “disease-causing” role in biology before they were seen. It was even seen as their defining role. They were even given a symmetrical shape in advance of it being seen; by Crick and Wilson in 1956 on the theoretical basis that anything this small must be constructed simply.
It could be that there are larger viruses. Recently giant ‘mimiviruses’ have been reported with over 1,000 genes. However, I think the definition of them as viruses could be mistaken. I would argue that a virus is a messenger vesicle, and that these are clearly more like cells.
Virology has long defined viruses also as “dead,” on the basis that they cannot reproduce – and because they could be reduced into the forms of crystals and then reactivated.
In the decades preceding the invention of the electron microscope, biologists had theorised that there were tiny germs that could pass through filters, thinking of these as mini-bacteria. When the microscope found small dots that seemed able to enter and leave cells at will, and even to change the DNA of cells, it was immediately decided these were the enemy, the “filterable viruses” that had been long sought.
But new techniques such as NMR spectroscopy and especially X-ray crystallography are now starting to show us the minute world in which they exist as living, pulsating with energy, colour and movement – and, with this new vision, very different views of viruses are emerging. We have so focussed on seeming viruses as invaders, that we seem to have forgotten that cells create viruses. Thus, we should get a better understanding of them if we look to see why cells make them..
On my own journey into this science, I have found inspiration in the work of several great woman of biology who transformed our knowledge of cells. First among these is Dr Barbara McClintock who, after being practically ignored and belittled most of her life, was finally in her old age, was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1983for her discoveries in biology.
She achieved a totally different vision of the living cell from most of her peers. In her Nobel Lecture of 8th December 1983 she spoke of cells as making “wise decisions” and as highly sophisticated in their responses to the environment. “A genome may reorganize itself when faced with a difficulty for which it is unprepared.” “Cells are able to sense the presence in their nuclei of ruptured ends of chromosomes, and then to activate a mechanism that will bring together and then unite these ends, one with another. …[This] is a particularly revealing example of the sensitivity of cells to all that is going on within them. They make wise decisions and act upon them.”

McClintock continued: “Cells must be prepared to respond to many sources of stress. Mishaps that affect the operation of a cell must be occurring continuously. Sensing these and instigating repair systems are essential. … It is becoming increasingly apparent that we know little of the potentials of a genome. Nevertheless, much evidence tells us that it must be vast.”

As for the virologists that presume cell and viral genomes stay the same in their vaccine cultures: “The establishment of a successful tissue culture from animal cells, such as those of rat or mouse, is accompanied by readily observed genomic restructuring.”

She concluded: “In the future attention undoubtedly will be centered on the genome, and with greater appreciation of its significance as a highly sensitive organ of the cell, monitoring genomic activities and correcting common errors, sensing the unusual and unexpected events, and responding to them, often by restructuring the genome. We know about the components of genomes … [but] we know nothing, about how the cell senses danger and instigates responses to it that often are truly remarkable.”

This was very far from the mechanistic molecular studies that still dominate virology, in which the cell is often seen as the passive invaded victim of the cunning hijacking germ. I loved her vision.
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Another great woman of science is Dr Lynn Margulis who was also belittled and marginalised for many years. She theorised that our cells evolved and were constructed by “germ” bacteria that had learnt to live together. She predicted that their genetic codes would be discovered within the calls, and they were. Today she is credited for revealing that the powerhouses of our cells, our mitochondria, were once separately existing bacteria, as were also the other organelles, or “small organs”, within the cells.

No talk here of a race between selfish particles, of cells as fiercely independent individuals. Rather the more female vision of advance through compromise, symbiosis and cooperation.

The third biologist who has taught me much is Dr Mae-Wan Ho, the founder of the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS), at the UK’s Open University. She took the ideas that Barbara McClintock first put forward and ran with them. What emerges from her work is a picture of cells as centres of dynamic fields of energy, as fluid crystals, electric, magnetic, coherent and quantum. In one of her papers she shares the vision that drives her. “I see all nature developing and evolving, with every organism participating, constantly creating and recreating itself anew.”

Then there is the work of a man – of Professor James A. Shapiro. He has shown how our cells use massive amounts of information with enormous computational skills. He wrote: “The expectation of its pioneers was that molecular biology would confirm the reductionist, mechanical view of life. However, the actual result of molecular studies of heredity, cell biology and multicellular development has been to reveal a realm of sensitivity, communication, computation and indescribable complexity.”

In 2006 Drs. Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello jointly won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for describing how our cells control the making of proteins ‘involved in all processes of life, for instance as enzymes digesting our food, receptors receiving signals in the brain, and as antibodies defending us against bacteria.’

They showed how our cells delicately control this process through sending instructions by “messenger RNA (mRNA)” These particles are alike to retroviruses in carrying double-stranded RNA. They are somehow directed to control and regulate our genes – and to also monitor the arrival of new information. When viruses arrive at the cell, the code they contribute is immediately assessed, and may then be silenced by these same mRNAs (by a process known as “RNA interference”).

DNA, genetic codes, are simply information. By using a base of four to encode this information (the four nucleotides), rather than the base of two used by computers, our cells pack into tiny particles an incredible amount of information. “The bases are spaced every 0.35 nm [billionths of a metre] along the DNA molecule, giving DNA a data density of over one-half million gigabits per square centimetre.”

Our cells are a hive of activity. Information is more vital to our bodies than it is for a high-tech factory. This includes the constant dispatch of precise encoded information in tiny particles. Every day each cell makes and utilizes thousands of transport particles of varying sizes; with some, like retroviruses, capable of moving a few thousand “base-pairs” of code at a time, even cellular genes, while others, smaller than messenger RNA, are known as “microRNAs” since they carry only 20 or so base pairs of code. Every part of the cell thus talks to every other part.

“Exosome” is another name given by scientists to such “cargo-loaded small vesicles released into extra-cellular space”. In different papers exosomes are varying described as round particles of “up to 120nm”, “from 40 to 100nm”, from “60 to 90nm”. They are thus the same size as, or a bit smaller than, the typical retrovirus. Like retroviruses they are produced when cells are subjected to radiation damage. It is sometimes difficult to tell exosomes and retroviruses apart. It seems the distinction between them may hark back to the older concept of retroviruses as essentially pathogenic.

Exosomes are the subject of many a recent scientific paper. They are produced by many different types of cells, including T-Cells, and can be found in and around tumour cells where they produce a strong anti –tumour reaction. They stimulate the immune system, are T-cell stimulants, and have been found to fight both streptococcus pneumonia bacteria and diphtheria. They may be loaded with antigens against illnesses. It seems every year we are learning more of how such cellular mobile elements serve to protect us.

Even the p53 protein that we came across earlier as a possible target of a the SV40 virus, has now been found to play an important role in regulating the production of exosomes. Cells produce it as a reaction to damaging radiation exposure. It is now said to fight DNA damage.

Such particles, no matter how small, are not static pages of code, but are created as a vibrant part of a complex living cell, and thus may communicate by movement, through electrical currents , photons or magnetic fields as well as through moving genetic codes. Even the cellular water in which these particles float plays a major role in communications. Rich in salts, they preserve information, and as they flow within the cell they generate the electric currents that power the signals our nerves send.

Over the past few years cellular biology has become so important a field of research that in 2006, not only the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded for increasing our understanding of the cell, but also the Chemistry Nobel award. This was given to Roger D. Kornberg; “for his fundamental studies on how the information stored in the genes is copied and transferred to the parts of the cells that produce proteins.”

In his Nobel speech he emphasised that if this communication: “is interrupted the organism will soon die, since all protein production in the cells ceases.” He added: “Many illnesses – like cancer, heart disease, and different kinds of inflammation are linked to disturbances in the transcription process.”

So – how does all this relate the principle purpose of this chapter – the real nature of viruses, including the one we know of as HIV?

Well, HIV specialists today hold that HIV is assembled by the very same membranes within our cells where are made the above mentioned vital transport vesicles. They reported: “human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is generally thought to assemble at the [cellular] plasma membrane.” Dr Gallo himself referred in 2007 to how HIV is created on the membranes within the cell.

The proof they produce of this is interesting. They say HIV must be present, as they have found several proteins in this location that are known to make up HIV; particularly the protein p24 that was first identified by Dr. Robert Gallo as a vital constituent of HIV,

But, cellular biologists have revealed that the p24 protein is in the location where HIV is reportedly assembled, because this is where it normally does its work, playing a major role in the production of the normal healthy non-HIV retroviruses and vesicles. P24 is thus a normal part of every cell – not specific to HIV at all.

HIV scientists also reported: “Our data indicate that most of the infectious HIV produced by primary macrophages is assembled on late endocytic membranes [as are other healthy vesicles] and acquires antigens characteristic of this compartment.” They are thus saying it is close to being a normal human retrovirus or vesicle as it utilizes some of the “antigens’ (proteins) that make up them.

Dr Chris Kaiser recently described how our cells create and use an intricate transport system to deliver to the correct locations the proteins and information needed. In the cell’s Golgi apparatus are made transport vehicles, or vesicles, of every size, from healthy retroviruses carrying genetic codes with thousands of base-pairs down to the smallest mini-vesicles carrying 20 or so base-pairs of DNA.

There is a protein that plays a very major role in the process. It is known as the p24. Kaiser said of these; “Because of their abundance [in this part of our cells], their conservation through evolution, and the fact that they shuttle from the ER [membrane] to the Golgi compartments in transport vesicles, the p24 proteins are thought to be fundamental constituents of vesicles.”

The p24s also play a major role in creating all our healthy retroviruses. They serve as the central Gag protein – and, as such, help form the basic structures. “The Gag protein is the precursor to the internal structural protein of all retroviruses. …The internal structural proteins of retroviruses are derived from a single polypeptide.”

But, could this part of our cells also contain a different form of p24, one that is specific to HIV? I have searched the literature for proof of an `HIV specific p24’ and have not found it. The only thing near to this was a claim made by Gallo and Popovic in 1985 that the p24 in their AIDS virus HTLVIII could be distinguished from that found in HTLVI and HTLVII by the Western Blot test – but the data they produced was inconclusive. No proof was produced of these antibodies or antigens being unique to any of these viruses. This paper was apparently produced to substantiate Gallo’s claim that he, not the French, had found the AIDS virus and it was part of his HTLV viral family.

But I did find that p24 is regarded as a very stable molecule. Dr. Kaiser stated it is a “conserved” molecule – suggesting that it appeared early in evolution and still plays a vital role, thus ensuring it is protected from variations by the cell. Nobel Laureate Leland Hartwell stated in his 2001 Nobel Lecture: “The genetic control of cell division provided two important lessons that have been repeated over and over in molecular, cellular and developmental biology. The first is the conservation of proteins and their functions throughout evolution. This was not a surprising conclusion because all living organisms share a common ancestor.”

If there is thus no such thing as an HIV-specific p24, this would also explain why anti-p24 “responses are minimal or absent in many HIV-infected individuals.”

As far as I could see, the methods these HIV scientists used for this 2003 experiment were scarcely more advanced than those used by Popovic and Gallo in the early 1980s. The experimenters reported that they measured the amount of released HIV “by measuring levels of p24, or reverse transcriptase activity” –not by measuring HIV, or anything unique to HIV. In particular, they did not describe how they distinguished this p24 from that naturally in our cells.

Dr. Kaiser had no doubts about the importance of cellular p24. He stated: “The challenge is to explain the following: p24 proteins are abundant constituents of the vesicle membrane, and their cytosolic tails interact with and powerfully nucleate assembly of both COPI and COPII vesicle coats.”

Thus p24 helps make both the vital COPI vesicles that carry proteins to the membranes, and the COPII vesicles that carry proteins from the membranes back to the assembly factories. So – at the very sites were HIV is supposed to be replicated – the p24s are very busily at work doing entirely healthy normal things.

Professor Elizabeth Dax, in her testimony during the 2007 Australian Court Case, mentioned that HIV deviously manages to coat itself with normal human proteins, thus hiding itself from the immune system.

Again this is said to happen in the same compartments within the cell where are made our normal healthy vesicles. Is she right in thinking this a super-viral act of deception – or is what she is observing really the creation of normal endogenous retroviruses out of normal human proteins?

All retroviruses are assembled by the cellular membranes, in the same place where are made the smaller transport vesicles. HIV is said to be made here also– yet seemingly this assertion is not backed by any attempt to distinguish the healthy retrovirus production from that of HIV. .
Each of our cells is constantly prepared to evolve and adapt its DNA in response to environmental challenges. Each has within it particles known as ‘transposons’, molecular-sized engineers that experiment, so to speak, with our DNA, swapping tiny bits of it around, as if looking for ways to resolve problems. To date they have reshaped at least 45% of our genome.

It is the identical process to that used by the “hospital super-bug”. These modify their DNA to protect themselves from antiseptics or antibiotics in exactly the same way as our cells seek protection from toxins.

But we are more than single cells. An adult human contains approximately 100 000 billion cells. Cellular organisms thus simply have to communicate and co-operate. Our cells “talk” to other cells. Part of this may involve sharing potentially useful genetic code variations with other cells.

We have evolved a way to do this. Our cells produce a vesicle capable of passing from one cell to another. Into this they put the genetic code that is to be shared with other cells. Around this is wrapped a coat of proteins to protect it on its voyage. Such a particle is called a retrovirus,

Like the smaller transport vesicles used within the cells, it is assembled with the help of the Golgi apparatus. It is then budded out. On arrival at another cell, it places its cargo of genetic code within that cell and the protective retrovirus shell is thrown away. The cell then reads the new code, and may then incorporate this into its own DNA or possibly inactivate it.

In virology a division has been made between ‘exogenous’ retroviruses that travel between cells and ‘endogenous’ that we make ourselves, but, reportedly with “no absolute biochemical or functional distinction between them.” I believe they are essentially the same, with some tailoring for specific functions. The evidence is that our cells make them to meet toxic challenges, to repair and to protect the organism.

Thus, although, “it is generally accepted that Peyton Rous discovered retroviruses in 1911 when he induced malignancy in chickens by injections of cell-free filtrates obtained from a muscle tumour “ , Rous himself admitted that the cause of the malignancy might have been a chemical toxin in his filtrate. Could this toxin have stimulated cells to produce retroviruses?

Then in 1928 the President of the Royal Society of Medicine’s Pathology Section, A. E. Boycott, in a report on the “nature of filterable viruses`’ stated that with toxins “we can with a considerable degree of certainty stimulate normal tissues to produce viruses.”

Then the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research reported in January 1963 that viruses in general seemed to multiply after cells were exposed to “x-ray, ultraviolet light or certain mutagenic chemicals” and that this seemed to “alter the benign relationship” that otherwise existed between cells and bacteria.

Then in the 1980s Gallo found that he had to add toxins to cell cultures if he wanted them to produce retroviruses. He called these toxins his viral “growth factor.” But – if cells produce retroviruses when they encounter toxins – this suggests that cells make them for protection.

Retroviruses are also produced when there is a lack in methylation of cellular genetic codes – meaning that these codes are inadequately protected from oxidation, perhaps because supplies of the vital antioxidant glutathione are exhausted. Are the retroviruses produced to protect these codes?

Within our cells, there is a similar response to stress events. It is reported: “Unusually high activity or unexpected appearance of retroelements” [retroviruses without protective envelopes] within cells is often found in connection with stress events.”

In all these cases, cells produce viruses in response to toxins or other stresses. It has been suggested that retroviruses may serve by replacing damaged DNA (perhaps a reason why they have been found near cancer cells.)

White reported that: “Many retrotransposons carry enhancer sequences responsive to host gene regulatory systems so that they are capable of rewiring the regulation of adjacent genes—perhaps another example of “genomic altruism.” Such retrotransposons may be useful to their hosts in allowing rapid adaptation to a new environment or changes in a developmental pathway. There may therefore be a selection for retention of such retrotransposons as handy intragenomic mutator systems. Recent studies of plant genes, associated with sequences suspiciously similar to those of LTR retrotransposons, support this idea.

Professor James A. Shapiro noted; “molecular analysis has confirmed the generality of Barbara McClintock’s revolutionary discoveries of internal systems for genome repair and genome restructuring.”8 but I would add, such repair systems do not stop at the borders of the cell – they must extend to the whole of the organism.

It seems there is strong evidence for our retroviruses playing a very valuable role during human pregnancy. Several types of human retrovirus are produced in great numbers in the placenta. It is believed they serve to protect the fetus. It has also been reported that two retroviral genes play a critical role in the development of the placenta.

Shapiro acknowledged, in the light of recent discoveries, our notions “require a profound re-evaluation. All aspects of cellular biology are subject to computational regulation. So we can no longer make the simplifying assumption of randomness.” A wonderful example of non-randomness, he says, is how the caterpillar transforms into the butterfly. This involves its genome being “fragmented into hundreds of thousands of segments which are then processed and correctly reassembled.”

In 2007 it was discovered that cells seemingly spin a fine thread between themselves to guide the emerging retrovirus particles to their destination. Each retrovirus can carry some 5,000 base pairs of genetic code including, in addition to the genes it needs itself, “long terminal repeats” and sometimes extra “open reading frames,” perhaps to guide the production of other proteins.

We need an information genetic highway, and we have it – the world of retroviruses is entirely made by cells –and so too is the world of viruses.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize it, but it is not just retroviruses but all viruses that are the products of cells – and thus share the life of cells. If our cells make retroviruses for a reason, they presumably can make viruses for a reason. It may thus well be more appropriate to call viruses ‘cellular mobile elements’ (CME) rather than use a word for them that comes from the Latin for poison.

The cells of our world have been very busy. We now know that they have filled the atmosphere, waters and soils of our planet with countless numbers of virus transports carrying milliards of genetic codes. We live submerged in a sea of them. They enter us by the million with every breath. Given their numbers they are extremely rarely associated with illnesses – and we are assembled out of them.

Cells thus invest an enormous amount of energy in creating viruses. Within the cells this means that energy-producing mitochondria cluster around the transport-creating Golgi apparatus. Sometimes this process may go wrong – as in viremia – but I would argue that cells would not normally invest so much in this if it did not serve to both protect them and aid them by driving forward information exchange between organisms and, with it, evolution.

James Lovelock took this one step further by saying: “Living organisms and their natural environment are tightly coupled. The coupled system is a superorganism.”

Lynn Margulis strongly disagreed with him on this, saying calling Gaia a single organism was a step too far, but nevertheless, we now know, thanks to her and others, that our cells evolved out of germs that learnt to live together – and that viruses transported to us a large part of our very DNA. We once called such codes “Junk DNA” but we now know that they regulate our genes, guided our evolution – and that they, rather than our genes, make up the main difference between us and chimps. Our cells have thus a vast encoded library, assembled over eons. Today, evolutionary biologists are constructing a map of evolution going back over 300 million years by tracing this assembly.

Our DNA is thus not fixed but fluid. Some 45% of our 3,000 million base-pair genome is made up by moveable (“transposable”) elements. “The genome-integrated retrotransposons [retroviral-like particles] have been recognized as a major evolutionary force” and may have started to evolve some 3.5 billion years ago – at the same time that DNA first appeared. “It is probable that the cross-species transfer of sequences, either as DNA or RNA” has played a major role in evolution.

We are now inside the world of the virus, the centre of our study. What I have learnt of the cells that create every virus has shifted the paradigm with which I started this work. My first teachers of biology told me that viruses were dead, but nonetheless devious, invaders and hijackers. But, since all viruses are made by the sensitive and highly organized cells described above, I now see them as primarily mobile elements created to travel between cells, carrying and sharing genetic codes. This is the task our cells give them. They are thus not individualistic selfish particles with no need for their parents. Instead they carry with them the life and knowledge of the cell.

Unfortunately there is an unspoken theory underlying much of virology. It is that viruses are always invaders, and that they possess a survival instinct identical to that of a bacteria or cell. But I would question this. Their genetic codes are tiny. They are not designed to reproduce themselves or to live independently of cells – or to scheme to force cells to do work for them. I would suggest that it has never been proven that they are capable of having such motives. I would posit that they are essentially nothing else than cellular transport vesicles incapable of any guile or wish to survive apart from the cell.

I am not thereby presuming none of them can damage us. Every living particle can malfunction. Encounters with unknown genetic codes might have created havoc among Aborigines when Europeans first went to Australia – but the cells of Aboriginal people would have swiftly worked to adapt. A healthy immune system has many ways of protecting us by destroying or neutralising such strange or dangerous viral genetic codes. But that does not mean that viruses are primarily made to infiltrate and hijack organic life.

To date it has proved extremely difficult to kill or inactivate viruses. I would suggest that our “viral” illnesses could be more successfully treated if we regarded them instead as “cellular” illnesses – for it is the cell that produces our viruses. A cell can be poisoned and it can be starved. The flow of energy and communications on which its health depends can be disrupted and presumably it can be misinformed.

The ability of our cells to absorb genetic information from outside, from endogenous viruses and others is basic to our defences. This ability may also be a path whereby occasionally a dangerous code or toxin, gains entry, but it is a path formed by our bodies because of the vital need they have to absorb new genetic information.

Why else should cells evolve the receptors they possess for viruses? Surely, not to facilitate invasion? It is more logical to posit that the receptors are there because the cells need to take in what the transporting virus brings them.

The International Committee on Viral Taxonomy describes a virus as “an elementary biosystem that possesses some of the properties of living systems such as having a genome and being able to adapt to changing environments. However, viruses cannot capture and store free energy and they are not functionally active outside their host cells.” But this description fails to give them any function or to explain why a cell would make them. It omits entirely their ability to move genetic codes from cell to cell.

When we look down an electron microscope for viruses, what do we see? Very small rounded grey particles, with perhaps a dark core of varying shapes. Sometimes they appear to be budding out of the side of a cell. It seems they place in cells their cargo of genetic code. The protein container for the code is then simply thrown away, as far as we can judge.

But, sometimes cells are observed to die shortly after the particle enters them. On the face of it, this seems like aggression, like “typical virus behaviour” – but, it is reported that this process may well not be pathogenic, but part of the natural process of cell replacement by which our bodies stay healthy.

Our cells are known carefully regulate all such processes by instituting systems of control. Dr L. Huber reported that natural cellular death, or apoptosis, involves intracellular communication. Tiny “microparticles” or “vesicles are released from the membranes within the cell during activation or cell death.” They leave the cell to travel to other cells where seemingly they have work to do. “These particles can serve as mediators of intercellular cross-talk and induce a variety of cellular responses.”

For example, on arrival at macrophages, or immune cells, they may enter and tell these cells that it is time to die. Huber stated: “Previous studies have shown that macrophages undergo apoptosis after phagocytosing microparticles.” Apoptosis is normal programmed cell-death. He added that, in their experiments, the “microparticle-induced apoptosis” seemed to be caused by the particles’ “cross-talk” perturbing biolipids, or the fat content, of the macrophages.

But, these normal particles thus do what viruses are supposed to do. They enter, “infect” cells and bring about their deaths. Yet, our bodies stay healthy. What these “infectious” vesicles are doing is entirely natural and healthy.

But Huber suggest that in certain circumstances, when our bodies are under severe stress, such as in “clinical situations with excessive cell death due to malignancies, autoimmune diseases and following chemotherapy, high levels of circulating microparticles” might be produced that might suppress ‘the immune response due to loss of macrophages.” This, Professor Umber suggests, could be mistaken for the action of HIV.

Although, as pointed out earlier, AIDS-related illnesses do not always correlate with having low numbers of CD4 immune cells, it seems possible that such low numbers may thus be caused by the normal process of programmed cell death going askew under cellular stress.

Dr. Steven Lanka, a virologist, has reported that he cannot find evidence for the complete isolation of any medically relevant virus – and given the extreme physical difficulties of doing this, this is not too surprising. He interprets the electron photographs of “viruses” published to date as showing parts of the normal “intra- and intercellular transport” system. He calls viruses simply “cell components.” These insightful statements fit with the research reviewed above.

Jean Claverie of the Structural & Genomic Information Laboratory summarized: “Viruses have come a long way from being unbecoming to the Tree of Life, to be given a central role in all major evolutionary transitions” in “a spectacular renaissance in the field of viral evolution.” He argues that “viruses are the dominant life form on earth” – but if so, I would add that it is only in unity with cellular life.

On this journey I have thus found I was wrong in thinking of viruses as alien foreign creatures, as rivals in the battle of life; and have learnt that we should not be so scared of them for we evolved from them, make them and live within a sea of them.

Effectively, for our own bodies, we are Gaia. We rule over bodies that are the natural home for vast herds of bacteria of many kinds and a milliard flights of viruses, As long as they exist in harmony, we basically stay healthy. They serve us and do not hurt us. Nearly all the so-called dangerous germs, such as TB bacteria, are simply ordinary parts of us, our inseparable and harmless companions.

In 2006 a study of mine was published on TB among diamond mineworkers. What I had learnt during research in South Africa was that TB bacteria live contentedly in every healthy adult – and, in the case of these workers, it was when their lungs were cut to pieces by the silica dust and asbestos ore fibres plentiful and scandalously uncontrolled in major De Beers diamond mines, that the bacteria started to grow in the wounds in their lungs. One mineworker told me; ‘the diamonds are sitting in asbestos”. Another, a driller who had had part of his lungs removed by surgery, said he thought the mine owners wanted the mine to be very dusty “to hide the diamonds from us.” From all reports, the company unfortunately blamed the TB on AIDS rather than put in normal ‘wet-drilling” dust-suppression measures.

It is always easier to blame germs. If the cause is toxins, someone might be able to be sued.

As for AIDS, my conclusion is that we need to revise our concept of this illness. The fight against HIV has been misconceived and an incredible waste of money. But our immune systems can get damaged, our cells’ energy systems can go down – and when they do, they can create a chaos in which our minute inhabitants can hurt us - and this is really what AIDS is – a generic condition common to many illlnesses.

What can take our systems down? A major cause is poor diet and water, lack of certain vital minerals such as selenium, used by our cells to protect themselves from toxins, and high degrees of environmental or inside-body pollution. Look around us. Is it surprising that birds in China started to fall ill with “Bird Flu” when they were flying through ever-increasing vast clouds of industrial pollution? Their cells must have found it incredibly hard to cope. No wonder many died.

Why spend billions on chasing tiny bits of genetic code in dead migrant birds, looking for an unidentifiable part of a not-yet found mutant flu virus when we put scarcely anything into stopping this mutant-causing pollution?

Look again at the “Great Flu Epidemic of 1918.” Was it surprising that it broke out on the Western Front of the Great War, after five years of carnage and chemical warfare? We would need another war like this to reproduce those horrific polluting cell-damaging circumstances. Why do virologists now scare us with predictions that a similar epidemic is certain to strike soon?

It is as if the virus is essentially a nano-terrorist sent to us from an alien plant, equipped with a brain capable of out-witting our cells, a fearsome hijacking infiltrating enemy that deserves to have a multi-billion dollar “war on terror” waged against it – to the great benefit of the pharmaceutical industry.

A side consequence of this – is, as it was at the birth of the AIDS epidemic, that we are distracted away from the far greater and important tasks of dealing with environmental toxins, lifestyle issues, poverty issues.

In fact, it is even worse. Not only are we distracted from these tasks, the priority we give to the fight against viruses has resulted in far greater and more dangerous pollution. We spray organophosphate and organochlorine toxins to kill them, we administer toxic chemotherapy drugs to dissuade our cells from making them – despite making them being an entirely natural process.

It thus could well be argued that the war on terror waged by virologists has been more dangerous to us than the war on terror waged internationally.


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