Masters of Health Magazine April 2024 | Page 13

hypothesised viruses during in vitro experiments.*21 Once again, this practice is scientifically invalid as a methodology to establish the existence of something because the interpretation of the results depends entirely upon the presumption that the ‘something’ must exist. Cytopathic effects (CPEs) are claimed to indicate the presence of viruses but they can only be said to be the observation of cells breaking down in a test well.

The CPEs are the dependent variable in the experiment but it is patently clear that no independent variable (a “virus”) can be discerned in this process. The postulated virus remains hypothetical as it could not be identified as a specific entity at the start of the procedure and cannot then be claimed to have a physical existence based solely on subsequent observations involving the dependent variable.

At this point, it may be claimed that the in vitro appearance of vesicular nanoparticles in a cell culture mixed with a specimen derived from an organism with a “viral” illness provides evidence that viruses exist. However, this once again invokes the aforementioned petitio principii fallacy as the existence of a virus (and many of its hypothesised properties) is asserted in advance in the form of the “viral” illness.

(a)           We can summarise that some of the problems with using cell cultures as purported evidence include:

(b)          The particles being declared as “viral” are seen for the first time as part of the CPE observations, i.e. they are dependent variables. It is preposterous to claim that they are also the independent variable in the same experiment.

(c)           The in vitro (laboratory) observations cannot be known to replicate an in vivo (within living) process.22

The techniques involved in electron microscopy introduce further variables that are not controlled, in addition to technical

artefact and the further limitation that they are static structures embedded in resin, not living tissue.23, 24

The details of each published cell culture experiment can be analysed in depth; something that has been done by us and others on numerous occasions.*25 In themselves, points (b) and (c) raise currently insurmountable problems as it is unclear if the observations in these settings replicate natural biology. Regardless, the entire process relies on a logical fallacy, a manifestation of which is expressed in point (a) and with regard to the pivotal virus existence question it renders the entire exercise invalid.

Keep in mind that the cell culture technique is virology’s ‘gold standard’ of evidence that has been advanced to establish the postulated virus model. Whether any of the practitioners have realised that the methodology they have employed could not possibly be scientifically controlled is unknown.

The crucial premise of the virus definition is pathogenic particles that cause replica particles in a host but the established ‘gold standard’ cell cultures cannot make a determination of their existence - the information is beyond the technique’s “event horizon”. By all accounts, there is nothing left to fall back upon and no escape from such a redundant paradigm.

The virologists may protest that these techniques are the only ones at their disposal because it is not possible to obtain the hypothesised viruses directly from living humans or other organisms, something that they once set out to do but apparently abandoned. Such a protest is of no scientific merit and the burden of proof remains squarely on their shoulders. The attempts to support the virus model through scientific methods have clearly failed and the imagined viruses have no known existence outside of logical fallacies and pseudoscientific claims.