This article appeared in De Andere Krant on May 24, 2025:

Most people have no doubt that bacteria and viruses can cause diseases such as polio, tuberculosis, foot-and-mouth disease and corona. This belief stems from the germ theory, which assumes that infectious germs can cause disease. Daniel Roytas, an Australian expert in natural medicine and nutrition, argues in his book Can you catch a cold? that there is no scientific evidence for this theory, even though it forms the basis of modern medicine. ‘The idea of infectious germs has created a global epidemic of fear that only benefits the medical industry itself,’ he says.

The idea that invisible ‘tiny bodies’ can cause disease is centuries old. Girolamo Fracastaro, an Italian physician, suggested in 1546 that pathogenic substances could be transmitted through the air. Around 1850, the pathogen theory became commonplace, especially through the work of French chemist Louis Pasteur, who was heavily sponsored by the French government, the media and the medical lobby that was quickly gaining more power at the time. Because of Pasteur, we now drink pasteurised milk: milk that has been briefly heated to 72 degrees Celsius, killing most of the bacteria. Because of our fear of germs, we have our children vaccinated in good faith, believing it will protect them from infectious diseases.

Pasteur was strongly opposed in his time by doctors and scientists, including Professor Antoine Béchamp, with whom he was constantly at odds. At the time, Béchamp introduced the terrain theory, which argued that we get sick from environmental influences such as wrong food and toxins, not from infectious viruses or bacteria. Many doctors and naturopaths warned already then against the emerging vaccination industry that was claiming many victims, but the lobby was so powerful – even then – that not Béchamp, but Pasteur was proclaimed a medical hero status – to this very day.

The word ‘virus’ comes from the Latin word ‘virion’ meaning poison. Today, it is used to denote invisible pathogens that magically jump from human to human – and sometimes from animal to human. They penetrate deep into the body’s cells where they start multiplying and causing disease, without being clear how this works. Indeed, virologists and doctors never wonder how viruses cause disease and infection, let alone consider whether viruses exist at all. For them, the fact that sometimes large groups of people or animals fall ill at the same time, is proof enough that viruses exist.

For Roytas, this is not satisfactory proof. According to him, there are many other possible reasons for large groups of people or animals suddenly getting sick. Think of food poisoning, nutritional deficiencies, pesticides, chemicals and radiation. He refers to the history of scurvy, which was once thought to be caused in sailors by infectious germs, until it was discovered that it was a lack of vitamin C and other essential nutrients. From then on, crates of oranges and lemons were taken out to sea.

Polio, or infant paralysis, which was common after World War II, is still attributed to the alleged polio virus. During the same period, pesticides, especially DDT, were widely used for the first time in history. It was advertised extensively and municipalities had cars driving through the streets from which large clouds of DDT powder were sprayed, in which children played. Years later, it was discovered that DDT can affect the nervous system, causing paralysis. DDT is still used in North Korea, India and China.

Another example: smallpox outbreaks were always associated with a lack of hygiene. However, when closed sewers were built in Leicester around 1890 and there were no longer turds floating in the water in which people washed themselves and their clothes, the number of cases of smallpox dropped dramatically.

These examples show that the causes of scurvy, polio and smallpox were something quite different than viruses. Roytas goes one step further in his book. He presents many experiments on humans that seem to show that there is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of infectious viruses. For example, in the US army in the early 20th century, large-scale tests were done on soldiers to find the cause of the Spanish flu, from which millions died at the time. None proved the existence of a virus. Milton J. Rosenau, a New York physician, conducted thousands of experiments in 1919 on people supposedly gripped by the Spanish flu. He had healthy and sick people in an enclosed room coughing in each other’s faces, drinking from each other’s cups, and so on. None of the healthy people got sick. These studies clearly showed that the Spanish flu epidemic was not caused by a virus, but had very different causes.

Roytas devotes a whole chapter to the cold research centre founded in England, the CCRU: Common Cold Research Unit. This institute served from 1946 to 1989, but was disbanded because they could not prove that colds and flu were contagious.

German physician Robert Koch – after whom the Robert Koch Institute is named – formulated in the late nineteenth century four postulates that a theory must satisfy to prove that a particular pathogen causes a particular disease. The Koch postulates are:

1. The pathogen (the virus or bacteria) must be isolable.
2. The pathogen must be able to be grown in a lab.
3. A healthy person coming into contact with the cultured pathogen must develop the same symptoms.
4. The pathogen must again be able to be isolated from the subject.

The Koch postulates are accepted by both proponents and opponents of the pathogen theory. German virologist Stefan Lanka argued in the late 1990s that virology did not meet any of its own conditions. Proponents of the pathogen theory, including renowned cardiologist Peter Mc Cullough and health expert Dr Joseph Mercola, argue that while this may have been true in the past, modern technology does meet Koch’s postulates and viruses can be isolated. Opponents of the pathogen theory, including Dr Tom Cowan and Dr Andrew Kaufman, who have united in the rapidly growing, global ‘no-virus’ movement, correctly argue that viruses have never been isolated.

The scientific meaning of the word ‘isolation’ is that the virus or bacteria is separated from everything else in the sample, including proteins, cells and waste products. However, this does not happen in current virology. There, by ‘isolate’ they mean separating the sample from the sick person, which is not the same as isolating the virus from the sample. This is why the ‘no-virus’ movement argues that no virus has ever been isolated.

According to Roytas, it is important to distinguish between viruses and bacteria. Bacteria can be easily isolated using the original Koch method ánd are visible under a microscope, so their existence is not in dispute. However, opinions are divided on their function. In modern medicine, they are fought because they are seen as pathogens. In natural medicine, on the contrary, they are seen as helpers: they clean up dying cell debris that is released when the body is in the process of detoxifying and healing. Bacteria are the firefighters, not the arsonists. They are the consequence of disease, not the cause.

Christine Massey, a Canadian biostatistician, wrote to more than 225 health institutions in recent years asking for evidence of the existence of viruses, including government agencies CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in the US and several laboratories in Wuhan in China. She received responses from about half the institutes, and each time it came down to this: ‘We are unable to provide the documentation you requested.’

Roytas’ conclusion is that virology has never been able to find an adequate method to prove that viruses exist or can cause disease. That, he says, makes virology a belief, a pseudoscience, based not on facts but on assumptions and suppositions. Flu and colds are a reaction of the body to humidity, temperature change and air pollution, among other things, he writes. Fever, sweating and snivelling are a natural and safe way to detoxify and strengthen our health.

All this begs the question: why does the medical profession cling so stubbornly to the germ theory, when it seems very likely that people get sick from very different things? Could it be that the theory is a cover for the damage caused by the huge amounts of toxins that major industries have poured over the earth over the past century and a half? Think glyphosate and other pesticides in the soil, water and our food, industrial chemicals and synthetics in detergents, clothes, medicines and, of course, vaccinations.

In addition, germ theory is the basis for one of the most profitable industries of all time: the vaccination industry. If viruses and bacteria did not make us sick and we therefore no longer had to fear them, this billion-dollar industry would collapse immediately. For Roytas, this conflict of interest between the pathogen theory and the vaccination industry was the reason to study this subject in depth. Has he managed to end the virus debate with his book? His book provides the answer.

Sanne Burger
sanneburger.com
deanderekrant.nl