- Posted by Paul Ericson on October 19, 2009
In just 50 years antibiotics are well on their way to becoming
obsolete. And the reason is that nature adapts faster than we can
innovate. Antibiotics first came out as a nearly miraculous cure for
common infections. But little thought was ever given to two key
questions:
- Why do some people get infections and others do not?
- How will infectious agents respond to antibiotics over time?
The history of antibiotics and the antibiotic-age that they
ushered in involves several historical figures, some famous, some not
so famous. Men like Pasteur, Bechamp, Koch, Bernard, Carnegie, Rockefeller,
Fleming, all had a hand in it.
Whenever there is an outbreak of disease there are always people
that never get sick and sick people that don't die. So why is that?
The answer is nutrition. But unfortunately modern medicine and
nutrition researchers don't see it that way. And this is the core of
a long brewing controversy in science.
In France during the 1870s, three scientists were conducting
experiments with yeast, and the newly discovered micro-organisms
called bacteria. All were conducting similar research and there was
a great deal of borrowing in the competition for novel discoveries.
There were two french men, Louis Pasteur, Antoine Bechamp, and a
German, Robert Koch. These individuals worked independently and each
knew that he was onto a whole new area of human discovery, and the
race was on to influence the medical world and make a fortune.
Pasteur won the race of politics and influence and today
students memorize that Louis Pasteur "discovered" the Germ
Theory. Not only is this inaccurate, but Germ Theory itself is
unsubstantiated even today. Pasteur himself, recanted the theory and
admitted that his rivals had been right, and that it was not the germ
that caused the disease, but rather the environment in which the germ
was found.
The Germ Theory
Germ Theory states that there are separate diseases and that each
disease is caused by a particular micro-organism. It is the job of
science to find the right drug or vaccine that would selectively kill
off the offending bug without killing the patient.
Sounds like a good idea at first. But nature is a moving target--both the infectious agent and host.
Bacteria and viruses are "environment-specific." That's
why some people get the flu and others do not and why some die and some do not. That's why some doctors and nurses are immune to
disease even though they're surrounded by it day in and day out.
Deepak Chopra tells a story where the influenza virus was isolated
and implanted directly onto the mucous membranes of a group of
subjects, with only 12% of them getting the flu. If it was the germ
and not the environment (subject), then more people should have gotten sick.
Instead what happened is that 88% of the subjects were able to fight
off the virus.
The Germ Theory is weak and Pasteur knew it, hence the death bed
confession. But Pasteur had a gift for self-promotion. He would never
let his research keep him from an opportunity to address royalty or a
medical society at a prestigious university.
He was well published, frequently quoted, and given practically
every honorary title and chair in Europe. The record establishes
fairly clearly that Pasteur "borrowed" research for
some of his most famous discoveries, and then capitalized on his
celebrity of being there first.
Before his death, Pasteur left instruction not to release over
10,000 pages of lab notes after his death. It wasn't until 1975,
after the death of his grandson, that the secret notes were finally
made public. Professor Geison, a historian from Princeton, made a
thorough study of the papers. He presented his findings to The
American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston in
1993. Dr. Geison concluded that Pasteur published a great deal of
fraudulent data and was guilty of multiple counts of scientific
misconduct, violating rules of medicine, science, and ethics.
Both Koch and Pasteur were motivated by money and fame. In the race for an anthrax vaccine, not only did Pasteur not
test it on animals before using human subjects; it was also
established that Pasteur actually stole the formula from Toussaint, a
colleague. Toussaint died a few months later of a nervous breakdown
after being unable to prove his claim at the time.
To be continued...