A most wonderful book is also a cautionary tale
I surely made clear [1] that I have the highest admiration for Katalina Karikó and her achievements. Her story is instructive about her remarkable dedicated work, and combining it with an equally dedicated family life. But it can also serve as a cautionary tale about the limitations brought by being human. No human being can know everything, not even matters close to our special interests; we are all fallible, and may sometimes hold wrong beliefs [2].
In particular, researchers may hold wrong beliefs even in science, and even on matters quite close to their own special expertise. Indeed, that possibility is particularly prominent in contemporary science. The range of scientific specialties is now so vast, and specialization so necessarily intense, that active researchers need to trust what those in other specialties tell them. It would be impossible to carry on frontier research in any aspect of science while at the same time checking skeptically the mainstream consensus in all other specialties, even closely neighboring ones.
Consequently, inevitably, if the mainstream consensus in a neighboring specialty happens to be flawed or entirely wrong, then one cannot avoid being misled.
For Karikó as for innumerable others, that has happened over HIV.
Drew Weissman turned out to be Karikó’s most valuable co-worker, and his credentials are impeccable: M.D., Ph.D., microbiologist, immunologist who had worked at the National Institutes of Health in lab of the highly esteemed Anthony Fauci (p. 226); and Weissman worked at creating a vaccine against HIV.
Such a vaccine had been foretold by Robert Gallo in 1984 as attainable within a couple of years [3], yet that has still not eventuated four decades later. The reasons for that failure, as enumerated by Karikó (p. 235) and presumably offered by Weissman, are precisely the excuses that the mainstream HIV/AIDS community has offered over these many years:
è that HIV is unusually “wily”, infecting the very cells of the immune system that have the responsibility of fighting viruses
è that HIV mutates at every replication
è that it somehow camouflages itself
è that since it inserts its own genetic imprint into the host’s chromosomes, it can never be eradicated.
Those of us who recognized the many flaws in HIV/AIDS theory [3] and the mass of evidence against it [4, 5] can understand why the mainstream was forced to propose such a combination of unique and inherently unlikely mechanisms as explanation for the failure to achieve an anti-HIV vaccine: namely, that there is in fact no human immunodeficiency virus. The antigens, proteins, and bits of RNA and DNA whose detection is supposed to be a detection of “HIV” are actually the debris of cells disrupted and discarded in the normal course of events whenever there is severe physiological stress or oxidative stress ([4] sections 2.1.1.2, 3.2.2, 4.3.2, 7.3.3.4); that debris reflects the human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) that are a normal part of the human genome [6].
In fact, “HIV” has been detectable in less than 1% of the cells it supposedly kills ([4] section 1.3.3.1). Tests for “HIV” are enormously non-specific ([4], sections 3.1, 3.2), so the conjecture of incessant mutation at every replication was necessary only because every detection of “HIV” detected something different. The hand-waving notion of “camouflage” through insertion into chromosomes was offered because no matter how effective treatment with “anti-retroviral” drugs appeared to be, “HIV” always re-appeared; in any case, in the chromosomes of which cells was the HIV supposed to hide itself? All the body’s cells? How?
But Karikó had no reason to suspect that Weissman might have it wrong about HIV. She like other active researchers simply must trust what fellow experts in other specialties believe and disseminate.
That mainstream scientific beliefs on matters of considerable public importance continue to be wrong over many decades may be a relatively recent phenomenon.
Even as historians of science have noted that theories have often at first been wrong, history has also recorded continuing remarkable progress in science getting things right, eventually if not at first. Observers therefore had a basis for the common belief that science is self-correcting; though an obvious corollary seems to be perpetually overlooked: Any contemporary mainstream belief may be awaiting future self-correction and therefore should never be treated as absolutely true [7].
But there has been up to now no actual and also widely known instance where a mistaken mainstream belief brought damaging public actions over a period of many decades. Scholars in a few specialties do however know of one such instance: The belief that behavioral traits are hereditable in simple fashion led to practices to improve the human genetic pool by preventing people with undesirable traits from having children — the “eugenics” movement, by which tens of thousands of Americans were forcibly sterilized during the 20th century [8]. But this human tragedy is far from common knowledge; so there is no reason why any lay person or any specialist scientific researcher should nowadays entertain serious qualms about widely disseminated mainstream beliefs, unless they happen to hear of one of the small minority of maverick experts who dissent from the consensus.
As a matter of fact, there are dissenting experts on a very wide range of topics, including a number about which “everyone knows” what may in fact be wrong, say about the extinction of the dinosaurs [9], global warming and climate change [9, 10], and many topics in modern medicine, for instance about cholesterol or anti-depressants [11].
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[1] “A most wonderful book offers grounds for optimism”;
https://henryhbauer.substack.com/p/a-most-wonderful-book-offers-grounds
[2] “Most of us are wrong about things we firmly believe”;
https://henryhbauer.substack.com/p/most-of-us-are-wrong-about-things wrong
[3] Henry H. Bauer, The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory, McFarland, 2007;
re vaccine, see p. 164
[4] Henry H. Bauer, “The case against HIV”; http://thecaseagainsthiv.net/
[5] See also earlier Substack posts about HIV:
https://henryhbauer.substack.com/p/hivaids-deja-vu
https://henryhbauer.substack.com/p/the-hivaids-blunder https://henryhbauer.substack.com/p/deja-vu-hiv-wikipedia-thought-vigilantes
[6] Etienne de Harven, “Human Endogenous Retroviruses and AIDS research: Confusion, consensus, or science?” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, 15 (#3, 2010) 69-74; https://www.jpands.org/vol15no3/deharven.pdf — “Human DNA always contains approximately 8% of retroviral nucleotide sequences”
[7] Henry H. Bauer, Science Is Not What You Think: How It Has Changed, Why We Can’t Trust It, How It Can Be Fixed, McFarland 2017, 39-40
[8] Philip R. Reilly, “Eugenics and involuntary sterilization: 1907–2015”, Annual Review of Genomics & Human Genetics, 16 (2015) 351–68;
Cera R. Lawrence, Oregon State Board of Eugenics, 3 May 2012; https://hpsrepository.asu.edu/handle/10776/5663
[9] Henry H. Bauer, Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How dominant theories monopolize research and stifle the search for truth, McFarland 2012
[10] Steven E. Koonin, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, BenBella Books, 2021
[11] Henry H. Bauer, “What’s wrong with present-day medicine” (a bibliography); https://mega.nz/file/gWoCWTgK#1gwxo995AyYAcMTuwpvP40aaB3DuA5cvYjK11k3KKSU