JayTe
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by Amory Devereux and Rosemary Frei
About 150 years ago, scientists painstakingly constructed a set of principles that can prove whether a particular microbe is the cause of a specific disease or is just a bystander. Those three principles are known as the Koch postulates.
From all the available information, the novel coronavirus doesn’t appear to meet any of these tenets, never mind all three.
Like most human endeavours, the Koch postulates were the product of collaboration. First, Jakob Henle developed the underlying concepts, and then Robert Koch and Friedrich Loeffler spent decades refining them until they were published in 1890. The resulting three postulates are:
- The pathogen occurs in every case of the disease in question and under circumstances that can account for the pathological changes and clinical course of the disease.
- The causative microorganism occurs in no other disease as a fortuitous and nonpathogenic parasite.
- After being fully isolated from the body and grown in tissue culture (or cloned), it can induce the disease anew.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
This is why when people shout about how many cases there are, the numbers are a complete sham bcause the PCR test has not respected Koch’s postulates and its designer, Kary Mullis, said categorically it was not a suitable test for diagnosis. Such a pity that he died last year. Did he fall or was he pushed?
Koch’s postulates in the most basic terms are based on culturing bacteria from one specimen on pure culture, seeing if these cultured bacteria induce disease in a new specimen, then culturing the same species of bacteria again from the newly infected specimen. It has absolutely nothing to do with reproducing DNA segments. That is like saying a humpback whale is not respecting the traffic lights in your city. PCR tests were developed over 35 years ago. That science has evolved a bit since then. Just like Robert Koch’s science has evolved just a tad since the 1880s. I… Read more »
Yes, let’s use science from the 1880s, a time when viruses were not discovered yet. Or prions. Or other bacteria that cannot be cultured in the way that Robert Koch was used to. Koch himself still discovered during his lifetime that his postulates could not be applied universally. At the time they were certainly helpful and led to the discovery of many breakthroughs, yet over time they needed to evolve. And evolve they did. This is a poorly researched article with too many flaws, starting with the article posting 3 postulates when the link before the colon clearly lists… Read more »
From that research: “With Koch’s announcement in 1882 of his work with the tubercle bacillus, his famous postulates launched the rational world of infectious disease and an abrupt social change—strict patient isolation. The postulates, so successful at their inception, soon began to show some problems, particularly with cholera, which clearly violated some of Koch’s requirements. Subsequent studies of other diseases and the discovery of entirely new ones have so altered and expanded the original postulates that they now are little but a precious touch of history. The present additions and replacements of the original concepts are skillful changes that… Read more »
What about Bradford Hill’s canons?
too modern, too widely used and accepted, let’s keep it in the 1800s
When one digs deep into the diagnosis of Covid19 one finds it a mess. I read there is no valid standard to work with to confirm whether a test is valid. the working definition varied from country to country. There is no solid valid test for Covid19 which allows the medical system of any particular country to play fast a lose with designating which patients really have Covid19. This article is too short to show all that but that seems to be the direction that they are going.