Introduction to Fear of the Invisible

by Janine Roberts

Virology – the misnamed Science

The word ‘virus’ comes from the Latin for a poisonous liquid, and before that from the Sanskrit for the same. The hunt for them started when, towards the end of the 19th century, it was suggested that invisible living particles much smaller than bacteria might cause the epidemic illnesses for which no bacterial cause could be found.

As more of these were searched for and found in sick people, many illnesses became blamed on them. They became the invisible enemy, the nano-terrorist we must fear. We were instructed that one of our first duties for our newborn children is to vaccinate them against this dreaded foe. Thus was an ever-growing multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry created.

But, as I have travelled through the science that underlies this industry, I have gradually learnt to ask questions. I now realise that there is another way to see this story that fits all the data. I have learnt from biologists that our cells naturally produce viral-like particles without being invaded or infected, both when healthy and sick. Currently such particles are named by asking what illnesses they cause as if this is their raison d’être, their only importance, the sole reason for cells making them. They would be named far more positively and comprehensively by asking what cells produce them and for what purpose.

Scientists like Barbara McClintock, who won a Nobel Prize for finding that cells operate with intelligence and seek to repair themselves, have given us a very different understanding of the particles they make. We now know that our cells create multitudes of tiny transport particles (vesicles) to carry the proteins and genetic codes needed within and between cells. The ones that travel between cells, those our cells use to communicate with each other – are puzzlingly just like those that we have long blamed for illnesses.

It now seems that we may have broadly misconceived the virus; that most of them may be simply inert messages in envelopes carried from cell to cell. In the last ten years scientists have begun to rename them as ‘exosomes’, ‘particles that leave the body’ of the cell, thus removing the inference that they are all poisons.

Distinguishing the healthy particle from the pathogenic is now an enormous problem for the virologist, for it has been discovered that our cells make them all in the same way, in the very same place. It also seems we cannot stop this process without risking severely damaging our cells.

So, perhaps we need to halt the juggernaut of virology with its virus hunt, and look to see if there is another way of helping us keep healthy. We need to know how we can strengthen the malnourished cell, rather than use the many medicines that try to prevent it from making particles by interfering with its essential processes. We need to know if a poisoned cell may produce unhealthy messengers or viruses. We need to learn far more about cells – for only now are we starting to understand how they communicate and the very important role played in this by the particles we had totally demonised as viruses.

I spent over 4 years in the 1990s researching why the vaccines made to protect our children from viruses sometimes instead did them grievous damage. It then took me over 8 years to travel from accepting without question that a virus causes polio and another causes AIDS to discover that most people, including myself, have been vastly misled. I now realize that science today is so specialized, that every new generation of scientists has had to trust that those who laid the foundations got things right, for they cannot repeat this earlier work except at great cost. If this trust ever proves to be misplaced, it is absolutely vital to correct this with all speed and courage.

I have been horrified to learn from the highest scientific authorities that this trust has sometimes been very grievously misplaced. For example, high-level US governmental inquiries in the 1990s, guided by eminent scientists, explicitly reported the key foundation HIV research papers were riddled with grave errors and deceptively “fixed.” They documented these findings with great care – and I likewise do so here. But when the Republican Party gained control over the US House of Representatives at the end of 1994, it ended this most important investigation, buried its reports and left the scientific papers it found to be erroneous uncorrected. These same papers are thus still frequently used by unsuspecting scientists worldwide, who cite them as proof that HIV causes AIDS.

I present clear evidence here that these papers were fixed at the last moment before publication. I also reproduce the original documents so you can judge for yourselves.

When I dug back further, to the origins of virology and the great hunt for the poliovirus, I found the story was scandalously much the same. Powerful evidence was presented to Congress linking the summer polio epidemics to summer-used heavy metal pesticides. These scientists suggested remedies, reported curing polio – and were ignored. Instead parents were told to be scared of a yet undiscovered virus. Today thousands of children are still being identically paralysed in regions where such pesticides are heavily used – but all the World Health Organization (WHO) says is: ‘Don’t worry; we have nearly exterminated the dreaded poliovirus. We have checked. The paralysed children were not infected by it.’ As for childhood vaccinations, surely they have proved a great benefit?