The kooks...they're everywhere!

It's rather amazing is it? I think that between you, Tara and Orac we have enough cooks to populate an entire Discovery Institute seminar.

Sorry, should rephrase that into:

"Between your, Tara's and Orac's blogs, we" etc.

The people who argue against evolution are just as nutty.

We're not nutty, we're noodly!

Denying the germ theory of disease is very attractive to alties, because then they can blame disease on vague, undefined "toxins" that need to be "eliminated," rather than quantifiable, measurable, discrete organisms that can be eliminated through the judicious use of antibiotics. It's also very convenient if you are against vaccination, because if if you believe that infectious diseases are caused by bacteria or viruses, it becomes easy to justify not vaccinating.

How strange that I should read this after having pressed pause to take a break from watching "And The Band Played On."
Somehow makes a depressing movie even depressinger. ish.

Anyway, it should be clear to everyone by now that all disease is caused by a deficiency of noni/goji/mangosteen/flavor-of-the-week juice.

"It's rather amazing is it? I think that between you, Tara and Orac we have enough cooks to populate an entire Discovery Institute seminar."

If their culinary skills are the same as their scientific skills, I wouldn't want to eat anything they cook. And that goes double for the ones that don't believe in germs- I bet they don't wash their hands before handling food.

Or did you mean kooks? :-)

Frog blast the vent core!

Oh, wait, wrong things everywhere.

Yeah, denial of the germ hypothesis is actually pretty common. I seem to remember that it is a part of orthodox chiropractic, for example.

Denying the germ theory of disease is very attractive to alties, because then they can blame disease on vague, undefined "toxins" that need to be "eliminated," rather than quantifiable, measurable, discrete organisms that can be eliminated through the judicious use of antibiotics.

Or, as jspreen is, just say it's all just a result of poverty and "suffering". That's Tom Bethell's claim about AIDS in Africa; jspreen's just extended it to every infectious disease, anywhere, past or present.

Maybe I am mistaken, but I thought that the "serious" argument against germ theory was not that germs don't exist, but that germs are a "symptom" of underlying disease and that germs cause secondary symptoms. Thus the criticism of western medicine is that it ignores the deeper cause in favor of the secondary problem. Take for example, this guy: http://www.thewolfeclinic.com/reclaimbooklet.html

I am no scientist, so obviously I don't know, and can't evaluate whether what that guy is saying is a complete crock. As it stands, I trust western medicine and its emphasis on killing the bacteria.

But it seems pretty reasonable to me to take steps to prevent the bacteria from showing up in the first place. Unfortunately, few formal studies are done in this area because there is no money in it.

Other than "take this pill" there's no source of reliable information regarding what steps to take to prevent illness.

I'm surprised no one has brought up the theory of humours in order to explain disease.

You can't prevent getting sick. You can do minor things like wash your hands and not lick the sidewalk. But you will get sick regardless. Just a matter of how strong your immune system is. It comes down to your overall health.

That's my layman's view anyway.

Yeah, preventing the bacteria from showing up in the first place is called preventative medicine. You can sum up a lot of it as "stay healthy". That is, eat right, exercise, don't do things that are obviously bad for your body like smoking or staying up too late. Throw in proper vaccinations, and you've prevented most diseases from ever taking root.

Dave, preventing the bacteria from showing up, other than by the crude methods that Xanthir has explained, is impossible. Bacteria are so small and hardy that they float several kilometers in tha air, even into space, and live through all of that. Bacteria populate every nook and cranny of this world, and they will never be erradicated (although staying clean and healthy reduces their numbers and makes their threat manageable).

On the other hand, many diseases are caused by agents other than microbes, and there is a lot of information on how to avoid these (much of which Xanthir offers, and is common knowledge anyway).

More ways to avoid lots of infectious diseases:

1. Wash your hands.
2. Cook your food.
3. Keep your skin intact.
4. Keep your sewage out of your drinking water.

But it seems pretty reasonable to me to take steps to prevent the bacteria from showing up in the first place. Unfortunately, few formal studies are done in this area because there is no money in it.

Well, this is tricky, because many organisms (bacterial, viral, fungal, etc.) that cause disease are carried by people who are healthy. About 30% of us carry Staph aureus, for example, but most of us don't get sick from it for a variety of reasons. But we can trasmit it to others if we touch our nose and then shake someone's hand, for example.

It's also complicated because we carry such an immense load of bacteria on and within us. By sheer cell number, we're actually more bacterial than humans; we have about a log more bacterial cells in and on our body than we do human cells. The vast majority of these don't harm us when we're healthy (and indeed, many are beneficial in various ways), so there's simply no way to avoid all microbes--nor should we try. The best thing to do is try to avoid getting them from other people.

Other than "take this pill" there's no source of reliable information regarding what steps to take to prevent illness.

Handwashing (30 seconds under running water) and vaccination, as mentioned, are still the best advice. Keeping your body healthy and nourished means your immune system will be better able to fight off pathogens when/if they do become established in your body.

Not to spam, but if you're interested in learning more about microbiology/infectious disease, that's about 90% of the posts at my blog; feel free to browse through the archives, or if you have a specific topic you're interested in, I can point you in that direction.

Bacteria populate every nook and cranny of this world, and they will never be erradicated

Bacteria are an essential part of any ecosystem, and trying to "erradicate" them is, well, stupid.

Maybe I am mistaken, but I thought that the "serious" argument against germ theory was not that germs don't exist, but that germs are a "symptom" of underlying disease and that germs cause secondary symptoms. Thus the criticism of western medicine is that it ignores the deeper cause in favor of the secondary problem. Take for example, this guy: http://www.thewolfeclinic.com/reclaimbooklet.html

No one ever said the argument was that "germs don't exist." The altie argument is that "germs don't cause disease" or "germs don't cause disease without a lot of help."

That is a more "sophisticated" form of the argument. It dates all the way back to Pasteur's rival Béchamps' belief that it's the "soil, not the seeds." And while no one would deny that debilitated patients and patients with chronic health problems (such as diabetes) are more prone to infections, perfectly healthy people get serious infections all the time. Community-acquired pneumonia is one example. Or look at the flu pandemic of 1918, when most of the victims were healthy people in the "prime of their lives" (20's to 40's). Indeed, the pandemic got started in the U.S. at an Army base among young recruits.

So, since we already have countless different bacteria in our systems at all times and we don't always get sick, wouldn't that suggest it isn't tnecessarily the bacteria that is the problem, but the "terrain?"

For example, the website I linked to above claims that an overly acidic body will induce (1) greater bacterial growth and (2) the trnasformaiton of pre-exisitng bacteria from benign to harmful.

Again, I have no idea if that guy is a complete quack. But I can understand the logic behind a belief that the environment inside our bodies has a significant impact on our susceptibility to disease.

Dave,

First, the guy running the website you linked to before does look like a quack. Take a look at his qualifications, and add in the fact that he's selling something (and charging $125 just for a phone consultation!) are big red flags (in addition to his junk science).

But still, in many cases, sure, there are both host factors and microbial factors that, together, result in the generation of disease. For example, we know that some people are more genetically susceptible to certain microbes. People that have a mutation in a gene called CCR5 are, essentially, resistant to infection with HIV. Heterozygotes for the mutation that causes sickle cell anemia are much more resistant to infection with malaria. People that have certain HLA alleles more frequently develop serious complications from infection with Streptococcus pyogenes. These are only a few of the many, many examples we know of. Additionally, as I mentioned, host nutritional and immune status (are they vaccinated? Have they been previously infected with the microbe?) and the presence of other microbes play a role as well. Development of disease is a complex process that involves many factors; the sheer presence of the microbe alone isn't enough (indeed, dose of the microbe is another factor). Additionally, some strains of the microbes are worse than others; for example, compare the fatality of influenza H5N1 (the much-written-about "avian flu") versus that of our yearly influenza viruses to see how much of a role properties of the pathogen play as well.

All that I mentioned above are areas of active research, and especially as we have more tools and computational power to look at the effect of thousands of variables on the development of disease, a clearer (but still very complex) picture is emerging.

BUT, to say "the germ is nothing; the inner terrain is everything" (or, as Wolfe does, "acidosis is the main cause of all illness") is very, very, very misleading. OK, it's a total fabrication. Thing is, some pathogens thrive in more acidic environments (even the stomach); some thrive in more alkaline ones. Either way, the pathogen is a necessary component in development of infectious disease. No matter how acid your gut may be, you're not going to develop food poisoning unless you encounter Salmonella, or E. coli, or norovirus, etc. etc.

Dave: Regarding the body's environment having a significant impact on disease susceptibility, that's not a belief, that's fact. Your websites' specific claims about acidity...shrug...I have no idea, though it sounds at least partly quackish to me. Either way, it doesn't change the fact that many diseases are the result of microbial infections, with or without contributing factors. Indeed, this is why AIDS patients can exhibit some bizarre and rare diseases.

That site looks like it has glimmers of misused truth. "Fat cells store acid." Well, there are things called fatty acids, though I don't know if fat in general is acid. "The immune system is not the first line of defense." True: the skin, and mucous membranes, are the first line of defense. Keep stuff out of the body, out of the bloodstream. (Topologically, stuff in the gut is outside of the body.) And then, AIUI, there's a layer of non-specific defenses against invaders, evolutionarily older than the specific immune system, which is maybe the third line of defense. Pretty important, though.

Wow, talk about being beat out in style! What she said! ^^^

BUT, to say "the germ is nothing; the inner terrain is everything" (or, as Wolfe does, "acidosis is the main cause of all illness") is very, very, very misleading. OK, it's a total fabrication.

Yes, neither the germ nor the terrain is everything; it is the set of interactions among those entities where the pathology lies (or doesn't).

Ironically, while a lot of alties like to accuse scientists of "reductionistic*" thinking while claiming the mantle of "holism" for themselves, what could be more reductionistic than dismissing the whole set of interactions of interest in favor of concentrating on only one component of those interactions?

* by "reductionism", they are referring not to the well-established process of modeling something in terms of simpler and better-understood mechanisms in order to clarify understanding, but rather they mean by it a gross oversimplification.

test message; please ignore.

since my last comment actually managed to get through, and previous ones didn't, I'm testing to see whether it's my blog URL that trips the spam filter.

PZ, I hope you also noticed that you and Pooflinger are credited in Tara's comments section with having linked to this goofiness in the past.

Now, if I may wax reflective for a moment ...

One characteristic of altie theories is that each one seems to spring from philosophy more than from observation, e.g. Béchamp's "soil, not the seed." We hear echoes of this in Bill Maher's ignorant belief that people only get sick because their bodies are "swamps", or the fond hope held by HIV denialists that no one need get AIDS if they can just relax and love the bug.

Contrast this with Tara's detailed exposition of how infection and resistance really operate, and you can see the attraction. Real medicine is real work to understand. Adopting a comfortable and satisfying philosophy is a breeze by comparison. Come to think of it, why am I making life so hard on myself? Natural homeopathic blue-green algae, here I come!

These germ-theory deniers are not just kooks, they are dangerous to public health.

Suppose there is a kid who gets TB and goes to public schools. There is a great risk to the other kids who have been in contact so preventive antibiotics are given.

Sometimes there are cases of sudden meningitis that kill someone at school or at work. What do the authorities rightly do? They vaccinate everyone who may have been in contact with the victim. Not to do so would be criminal.

Then there are the cases of kids nonvaccinated for many contagious diseases because of their parents' ignorance. They can spread the disease to other nonvaccinated kids.

For a list of some of these.

http://www.cdc.gov/nip/diseases/child-vpd.htm

The deniers are not only endangering their own kids, but the kids of their neighbors.

I am a Chinaese,although i donot undersatand all of articles,I read carefully them.
Everything has its own reasons of existence.

Wow! Just...wow! I read most of that comment thread, and I was just utterly blown away. I mean, I've read about the occasional HIV->AIDS denier, and my Kenpo instructor occasionally goes off about his out-of-whack spine causing liver disease and all sorts of other problems, but I had no idea that there were whole classes of people who rejected the entire Germ theory like that. And boy are they obnoxious, too. Their posts just drip condescension and ooze arrogance born of misguided ignorance. I could just imagine them tilting their heads back to look down their noses at the computer screens as they self-righteously tapped out their indignation that scientists could reject their beliefs so out-of-hand. The desperate smarminess is palpable in their text.

Yet, you can see the parallels between their methods and those of other conspiracists, including creationists. There may be no contact between the two groups whatsoever (although that isn't true in this case), but the only real difference is in the particular subject. Everything else is the same: the persecution complex, deathbed conversions, lists of "credentialed" people who reject the mainstream theory, quote-mining, etc. If you put creationist text, anti-germ-theory text, UFO-believer text, etc. next to each other with the specific subjects redacted out, you'd never be able to tell them apart.

Don't forget the simplistic demands for proofs, yes/no answers etc. And in some type of cases, the lying with numbers/statistics.

I don't know why I even bother debating them - I guess I just can't stand seeing such gross stupidity and lying stand unchallenged.

I wonder if the absolute number of nutjobs has increased since I was a kid (back in the 50s & 60s), or whether they are just more vocal, or whether they just have more means to amplify their voices. Whatever it is, something has changed since then.

I grew up in an area populated mainly by conservative, devout Protestants, and yet I learned at an early age about the germ theory of disease, evolution, that the universe is billions of years old, and so forth, without ever hearing denialists preaching against scientific. I'm sure such people existed back then. But back then, they were basically undereducated people who had spent more time in church than in school (which was certainly true of my grandmother, who left school in the 8th grade).

There is a lot we don't know about how a society declines into a dark age of superstition and ignorance. I worry that the only thing that stands athwart the decline is our system of education. Take that away or corrupt it, and I think we'll be amazed at how fast the descent will be.

Now we have a gravity denier.

Ah, he needs to take Alan Sokal's "window on the 21st floor" test...

Now we have a gravity denier.

Yes, he appears to be the full package (though I don't know if he is part of the ID crowd). Impressive, isn't it?

Just so you know - that is B.S. First of all if you follow the whole discussion at some point the dude admitted that for the most part it is trolling (a sad phenomena of the internet) which exploits human psychology and hours over hours of educated people trying to discuss and convert someone who really doesn`t need help except for his obvious addiction to attention and the seeming power that you can initiate a hot debate over nothing by mere words.

Seconds of all a germ theory is a scientific subject, religion is certainly not. Meaning for the former you gotta be educated enough, otherwise you may just tumble between ever second web page that tells you differently, but convincingly.

Religion is a phenomenon in itself and is although equivalent to science apparently the exact opposite in a way . I dare say that neurochemically the same emotional centers and chemistry is involved. And in the end humanity boils down (at least for me) to the paramount question what borught about mental consciousness.

Unless YOU found an ingenious FORMULA to DIFFERENTIATE TROLLS (which can be highly educated) from actually uneducated users i suggest you focus on those religious kooks. Rationally you can imagine that the lesser the educationial profile of a person the lesser the likelyhood this person makes it to a PC, the internet, let alone into platform where the textual content is over 50%.

Seconds of all a germ theory is a scientific subject, religion is certainly not.

Who mentioned religion? PZ talked about people arguing against evolution.

wow...name calling, smarminess, condecention, and credentialism... why do I get the feeling that the majority of posters replying to this "kook" are just as hypocritical as him.
Point us to some studies that have either confirmed or denied his theories. I also feel that many are setting up a strawman argument,claiming he doesn't believe in microbes. tsk tsk...

Wow lucid

Did you notice this thread hasnt been touched in two and a half years?

And may I remind you of one of fundamental rules: It's up to the person making the claim to bring the evidence.

Now come on in to some of the more recent discussions for some real name calling. This thread only has 31 posts counting mine. We can go on 30 times that easily, and some times 3 times again.

Thank you kindly