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Grant's May 2022 Update
I am interested in reading more about AIDS and HIV because I have been hearing things said that seem to legitimately call AIDS into question. However, one should not immediately jump to the conclusion that viruses don't exist just because there is a misunderstanding of AIDS. I certainly understand why you would then extend your skepticism to all viruses...I just think that there is far too much evidence showing the existence of viruses for that skepticism to remain justifiable for long.
The lead scientist of the Perth Group is a medical physicist who had developed a theory of cellular function back in the 1970s that involved redox balance. She noticed quickly that a commonality in early AIDS patients was their exposure to strong oxidizing agents (nitrite inhalants (poppers), significant drug use (https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Drugs_in_the_Gay_Scene, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/43575705.pdf), repeated STI infections and their treatments), repeatedly over time that threw this delicate balance out of whack. She realized that things were backwards, that 'HIV' (that is, the signals being interpreted as a virus) was the result of, and not the cause, of this profound redox imbalance. When AZT came into use in 1987, it was a very strong oxidizing agent and was like throwing fuel on a fire. She saw all this and warned people. Since then her theories have been proven correct and you can just do a simple search for 'AIDS and oxidative stress' and it's widely acknowledged in the scientific literature. Of course they try and make 'HIV' the cause of this significant imbalance which I find highly implausible.
Here's an example of some research published in 2016, "Oxidative Stress Predicts All-Cause Mortality in HIV-Infected Patients"
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153456
She predicted this back in the early 80s.
Here's one of her published papers on this, "Oxidative Stress, HIV and AIDS".
Seems to me that while Grant welcomes his ideas being debated and challenged, in many instances that’s not what actually happens. Instead, false representations of his arguments are debated.
For example, the topic of viruses being ‘clever’. Grant wrote:
"And, contrary to a recent statement from a very prominent public health official they are not “clever”. They actually have the same intelligence as a rock. Therefore, they are not, and cannot be, out to get us."
And @wavygravygadzooks replied:
Since when was cleverness or intelligence a necessity for reproduction of RNA/DNA? Are single-celled organisms "intelligent"? Are worms "clever"? There's an awful lot of them around...a lot more of them than people by my last calculations. A lot of them inside people, using people's resources, kind of like, uh, a pathogenic organism?
@wavygravygadzooks agrees with @ggenereux2014 that viruses are not clever (or at least that intellect is not a requirement), yet his response to Grant is a ‘strawman’, a fallacy of misdirection. It’s framed in a way that distracts from the topic at hand and makes Grant appear to be wrong in some way.
Grant didn’t make a statement either way regarding the necessity of intellect in RNA/DNA reproduction, but the strawman argument implies that he did.
The purpose of Grant’s statement was to debunk ‘clever viruses’ as a popular misconception promoted by people in authority. The links below demonstrate that authority figures like virologists and news media do indeed promote ‘clever viruses’!
SCIENTIFIC PAPERS
The authors below refer to the “clever” intellect of viruses even in the titles:
- Clever, cleverer, cleverest, Klas Kärre, June 2002. It’s behind a paywall but if you scroll down you can see the quote, “The stupidest virus is cleverer than the cleverest virologist.”
- Stalemating a clever opportunist: Lessons from murine cytomegalovirus, various authors, June 2004.
- Clever COVID-19, Clever Citizens-98: Critical and Creative Reflections from Tehran, Toronto, and Sydney, various authors, August 2020. They even wrote, “Our title recognizes this specific virus as stealthy.”
NEWS MEDIA
Clever bugs meet their match
THE coronavirus is a clever little bugger. It has the access codes to our cells, which means that it can climb inside them.
Once in there, it rummages around the cytoplasm, elbowing its way past the organelles as it hunts down the mechanism that allows a cell to multiply.
And then it uses that same mechanism to make copies of itself...
So yes, a virus is clever. But it’s nowhere near as clever as those chaps and chappesses who work for the planet’s drug companies.
I was convinced I had coronavirus — turns out I just drink too much, 2020/03/06 The Sun
How A Clever Virus Kills A Very Hungry Caterpillar, 2022/09/12, NPR talks about how a “very clever virus outwits a very hungry caterpillar”, it “takes control”, has a “world view”, is “outcompeting other viruses”, etc.:
The inside of the caterpillar gets pretty much converted to millions and millions of virus particles. Then there are other enzymes that cause the exoskeleton to melt. And that liquefies the caterpillar, and then it can rain virus down on the leaves below...
So if you look at the world from the point of view of a baculovirus, it’s easy to see how it would have evolved to carry this gene.
Other scientists say the finding reveals just how clever a pathogen can be.
"Who knew that a virus would be able to manipulate the behavior of its host?"
To support his ‘strawman’, @wavygravygadzooks implied that worms are an example of an unintelligent pathogen. Yet the argument is flawed since research confirms that they are intelligent, such as this study exploring the neural mechanism of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans (The whole worm: brain-body-environment models of C. elegans, various authors, October 2016). This worm was also used as a model for a robot’s artificial intelligence because of the “complex behaviors it exhibits in a novel environment” (C. elegans: One small step for connectomes, one giant leap for artificial intelligence, April 2021, NU Sci)
To briefly touch on the importance of debunking the misconception of a virus being “clever” (and also “alive” which is a related but different topic), I’ll use the analogy of a farmer protecting crops. If he thinks the problem is a crafty pest destroying his crops, his strategies might be “outsmarting” them with clever traps or killing them with insecticides. But if the problem is toxins in the soil poisoning his plants or a lack of nutrients, the approach is completely different - removing the toxins and/or adding nutrients to the soil.
If Grant (and others) are right about viruses being endogenous (manufactured by cells mostly from our own bodies) rather than exogenous, then the proper choice of remedy/treatment is affected as well.
Fear of viruses is at an all-time high right now, so much so that coronaphobia has been added to the list of phobias (What Is ‘Coronaphobia’? An anxiety disorder that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, Health, February 9, 2021). Believing that viruses are cunning predators and foreign invaders set to destroy their human hosts adds another dimension and intensity to people’s fears. This fear can be detrimental (and according to Grant, unfounded).
There were other logical fallacies that I didn’t address, but I hope this post was enough to make people aware of them, whether in our own comments or those of others. They can be intentional or unintentional.
When logical fallacies are presented, they can greatly impede the fruitfulness of conversation, discussion, and debate. If we don’t spot them, we can be led down the path of abandoning truthful arguments in lieu of erroneous ones that sound more intellectual or convincing.
I hope this post helps people in some way to evaluate what they read online with more discernment.
@wavygravygadzooks, I have no means to verify by myself and be sure which theory is true about viruses, the mainstream or Grant's or some another one. Neither knowledge to form a solid opinion on the subject.
However as it was said in Beata's post (and I have read about it before in other sources) the methods current science uses to find viruses seem to me highly illogical / not convincing. So far I haven't seen someone contesting that these methods are actually used, so I guess they are. That alone doesn't say to me that the mainstream version is incorrect but puts a question mark.
The way recent "pandemics" was handled also seems to me highly illogical/nonsensical, yet there were people of science behind it.
I'm not sure what you call "been part of an advanced education program in the sciences", I have a Master's degree in sciences, not in a research orientation. For some time my work intersected social/human science/scientists, looking at their publications it was quite easy/frequent to find that conclusions they made, though presented with "scientific" arguments, would not stand logic and counter-arguments, and were often politically/societally orientated, yet those people were sure it was "science".
I like reading your posts on the subject too, maybe I'll form a more firm opinion later. I haven't heard about Norovirus, but what so special about it and Ebola?
There sure are a lot of smart people here! Once, on a gluten free list, someone brought up the fact that it seems like people with high intelligence might be wired sort of delicately. I also think that the more "domestic" an earth animal is (which is perhaps also about book smart, and not as much about street smart) the more delicate that animal is. In high school, the science-fair winner with his coke-bottle glasses isn't usually the linebacker... (did you ever see how straight the teeth are on the pro-football teams?)
Regarding proving that Grant's ideas are correct about vitamin A, there is also the possibility that his ideas are the ONLY thing that is going to help... for SOME, and that doing broad research across a large population might not tell you 100% about the VA story. It could be that 60% of those people are fine with loads of vitamin A, but 10% of them will die young on vitamin A, and the other 30% will just be uncomfortable.
Now, if you take only people who had Grant's early-onset kidney failure, or full-body eczema, or hey anyone with mysterious symptoms that aren't responding to anything else and put them all on his diet, you might learn something.
Ok, I'm a bit off topic and want to say that I'm not against WavyGravy's idea that although there are current shenanigans regarding viruses, it seems like the historical virus model had some useful properties. I mean, didn't people find that if you had cowpox (a gentler disease) then you didn't get smallpox (a deadly related disease)? didn't they recognize diseases by their symptoms, give them names, and watch them spread? Such as rabies or rubella or etc. Mom's kept their kids healthy as adults, by making sure they got their childhood diseases early...
None of this "the model of viruses is wrong" stuff is new to me, the WAPF had some write-ups on it years ago. I just didn't find that looking at it a new way solved much? To me, what is more wrong is that health care is a political mess and we've destroyed our economy.
I've got so little trust any more, from either side, the sanctioned and even the unsanctioned now. It's sad.
I'm not saying there's anything "special" about Ebola or Norovirus. Those just seem like obvious examples of viruses that are difficult to refute, in part because of how highly contagious they are and how quickly they spread among humans and how unmistakably violent the symptoms are, and in part because there doesn't appear to be a way for people to claim that something like a vaccine is responsible for causing them (e.g. people are claiming that the 1918 flu pandemic was the result of vaccines).
Norovirus is probably best known for raging through groups on cruise ships, due to a very large number of people being in extremely close proximity without any escape. I think you see it to a lesser extent in similar high-density situations like conventions/congregations.
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on May 14, 2022, 10:24 amI'm not saying there's anything "special" about Ebola or Norovirus. Those just seem like obvious examples of viruses that are difficult to refute, in part because of how highly contagious they are and how quickly they spread among humans and how unmistakably violent the symptoms are, and in part because there doesn't appear to be a way for people to claim that something like a vaccine is responsible for causing them (e.g. people are claiming that the 1918 flu pandemic was the result of vaccines).
Five minutes of searching turned up this web article from January of this year giving alternative explanations for Ebola. I have no idea whether the traditional theory of the Ebola virus or this article is correct. I am posting it to emphasize that the anti-virus commentators are not fleeing from the challenge of explaining Ebola. I didn't look into Norovirus.
https://truthcomestolight.com/ebola-shattering-the-lies-and-the-fakery/
You people are hilarious…
Your interpretation of the intention Grant had in mentioning cleverness was that it was solely to debunk what has been said in the media. You shouldn’t presume to speak for Grant, since he’s the one who made that statement. My interpretation is as valid as yours.
But let’s suppose that his sole intention was to debunk…he’s still wrong. The definition of “clever” revolves around “skill”, and “skill” is the ability to do something well. You don’t have to be “intelligent” (a highly subjective term, which is precisely what I was pointing out in my original comments) in order to be skillful. Therefore, because viruses do exist, and they don’t have to be “intelligent” in order to be "clever" and successful at what they do, Grant is doubly wrong.
My use of single-celled organisms and worms as examples was to exhibit how life forms lacking “intelligence” (relative to higher order animals) were nonetheless skillful and successful at their tasks, and could therefore be considered “clever”, even though the average person does not think of them as being “clever”.
So, no, my argument was not a strawman. You and Grant are both obviously wrong. Nobody denying the virus model has yet explained something like Ebola or Norovirus. Your comment was not helpful, it is inaccurate, just as Grant’s were, it is only entrenching the idiocy that is swallowing people up. It is also slandering me inappropriately...thanks.
Figures...
The crux is not explaining away individual symptoms (as that person's blog seems to be doing). Rather, it is accounting for transmission among individuals, consistent patterns of disease progression, and the comparison of gene sequences that are identical (in some instances) and very similar but not quite identical (in other instances) that collectively lead to a logical phylogenetic tree of evolutionary mutations and biological and geographic origins.
As a sidenote, that dude is obsessed with The Matrix. It's funny that people talk about unplugging from "The Matrix", as if there's one overarching nefarious matrix...do they not understand that we are all trapped within our own individual matrix (our mind)? Everything we experience is essentially fabricated by our mind. We are all essentially comparing our own fabricated matrices with one another and reshaping them as we go. These interactions collectively create higher level "matrices" (i.e. realities or truths) that are constantly shifting as well. In other words, there is no one Matrix from which to unplug. There are billions of them occurring simultaneously, some of which are more popular or dominant than others, but none of which is guaranteed to be the one unerring Matrix, and people are constantly "plugging into" and "unplugging from" this assortment of realities. The scientific method is pretty much the only tool we have to guide us toward which reality is most informative, most useful (i.e. which has the highest predictive power so that we can anticipate how one event will lead to another, and therefore gain control over our own futures).
My first and favorite introduction to the self-destructive nature of the human mind came from Kurt Vonnegut's book, Galapagos. Thank goodness for Vonnegut...that guy was a hero!
Science and religion are complete opposites. Faith by definition is belief without evidence. By saying that science and religion both use the same modus operandi, you are spreading false information. It seems that you don't understand what science is.
By the way, what scientists do is not what science is. Scientists, people who have science degrees, can use religious principles to determine their supposedly scientific beliefs, but just because some scientists use a religious methodology (or modus operandi) to determine their beliefs does not mean religion and science have the same methodology. I don't know if this what you were thinking, but this is the argument I'm going to make.
And by saying that religion and science use the same modus operandi you are implying that they are one and the same thing. Both religion and science are defined by their modus operandi.
Blind belief in authority (or authority figures e.g. the Pope) is one of the characteristics of religion. Blind belief in authority in medical science is described as eminence-based medicine. Authority can either be from popularity (i.e. a widely respected person e.g. Dr. Fauci of the CDC), which is what "eminence" means. Or authority can be derived from a steep social hierarchy in which power dynamics determines the outcome of people's beliefs e.g. the World Health Organization, which is funded and controlled by governments across the world and some extremely wealthy charities such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, uses its authority to dictate medical doctrines to the world in the same way that the Catholic Church dictates Catholic doctrine to the world.
Eminence-based medicine is pseudoscience (fake science or just false science) or in some cases outright religious belief, whereas evidence-based medicine is real science. Eminence-based medicine is a fancy way of saying medicine based on the appeal to authority fallacy or argumentum ab auctoritate as it's called Wikipedia. Wikipedia says appeal to authority is when there is an appeal to the supposed "expertise" of the person, but I think that a lot of medical scientists are more like "celebrities" (extremely popular individuals who are celebrated) and you could make the same appeal to authority with celebrity scientists on the basis of their popularity rather than their expertise. How many people who believe whatever Dr. Fauci says, actually know what his educational background is? You would get the same outcome if not the same kind of thinking when you swap out "celebrity fame" with "expertise" - false science.
The problem with modern medical science is lots of fraud and a general unwillingness among both religious and non-religious scientists to carefully examine the evidence presented to them from experts outside of their medical expertise or sometimes within their own medical expertise. Many medical scientists have "faith" in the findings of virology and other pseudoscientific fields such as psychiatry, but are unwilling to examine the evidence with their own eyes. It is "faith" in the medical establishment (the popularity or social power of a few medical scientists) or as Dr. Paul Mason calls it, belief in eminence-based medicine that is is the problem (other than outright fraud for financial gain).
Scientific evidence has the following properties whereas religious evidence does not:
- Falsifiability: can the claim be falsified?
- Reproducibility: can an experiment (i.e. an endlessly repeatable experiment) be conducted to verify whether the claim is in fact correct or incorrect or an observation be independently made over and over again to achieve the same result or observe the same phenomenon?
But this is how religious people adopt new beliefs:
1. Belief by subjective experience
2. Belief through "revelation"
3. Superstition, which can be described as behavioral conditioning in which a correlation is assumed to the cause of a certain phenomenon. B.F Skinner demonstrated superstitious behavior in rats and we this behavior in humans all the time: B. F. Skinner, Behaviorism and Your Superstitious Beliefs
Wikipedia defines revelation as "the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation
According to Beata's logic, I can't possibly be non-religious and my beliefs must be religious. If religion and science share the same methodology then they must be one and the same thing. How else would you differentiate these two subjects from each other? And logically, all my scientific beliefs are in fact religious beliefs and my lack of belief in god requires as much faith as someone else's belief in god. Therefore, one must have faith that there is no god. In actuality, it is doubt, not faith, that led me to believe that there is no god. In the absence of evidence for a god's existence, faith is required.