The Natural Selection Theory of Antibody Formation (1955)

Such a scientist does not allow himself to be blocked by inconvenient facts or by the confusing life of the laboratory. Such a scientist can attain the sublime through science by abstracting from concrete details, thereby reaching out to universal connections, and by putting his personal imprint on the world” -Niels Jerne

http://brunolemaitre.ch/narcissism-science/testp-page/

Jerne never took satisfaction from small discoveries — in this respect he resembled an artist more than a biomedical researcher — and he struggled to formulate theories of great breadth, wishing to impose his own worldview and his personality on nature.” Later in life, Jerne complained that immunology was becoming too complicated and technical. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/424253a

Six years after Frank MacFarlane Burnet proposed his Indirect Template theory for antibody production and with three major competing theories already available to choose from, it was time once again to throw yet another explanation into the mix to describe the formation of the still unseen, still unobserved, and still assumed to exist fictional entities. This new proposal came from Niels Jerne, a Danish immunologist who became known for supplying three “significant” ideas into the antibody story:

  1. Instead of the body creating antibodies from the antigens, the immune system already had all of the antibodies available in order to fight off any pathogen (Jerne’s Natural Selection theory proposed in 1955).
  2. The immune system can identify and distinguish what is from the “self” (or host) and what is not (proposed by Jerne in 1971).
  3. The idea that not only do antibodies attach to an antigen, but that they can also become attached to other antibodies (which became known as the Network theory proposed by Jerne in 1974)

This post will look specifically at Jerne’s Natural Selection paper and the idea that the body naturally has everything needed to fight off invading pathogens. In other words, it is not the antigen that is either directly or indirectly responsible for creating the antibodies as proposed by other theories. Jerne obviously had his own ideas for how these invisible entities formed, functioned, and existed in the body. Before delving into his paper, let’s see what we can uncover about some of his work and how he came about his ideas.

This first source is from Jerne’s obituary published by the New York Times. It gives us an idea as to what Jerne is recognized for:

“He was cited especially for three important theories of immunology that together offered a coherent general image of the immune defenses. They were built on findings from research that Dr. Jerne himself carried out, and also incorporated the fruits of work by many other researchers.

The first theory provided an explanation, which was generally accepted by 1984, of the fashion in which antibodies are generated to match any possible bacterium, virus or other intruder into the body. The second theory presented an inclusive picture of how the immune defense system develops and matures.

The third and newest of the theories was first propounded in the mid- 1970’s and became known as the network theory. This was a logical and elaborate explanation of the interactive processes by which the body’s immune system goes into action, when needed to fight disease, and later lapses into inactivity when it is no longer needed.”

Jerne was recognized for creating a “coherent general image” of how these unseen entities formed and functioned by using his research and the work of others to create his “coherent” narrative. This “general image” relates to the three main ideas mentioned briefly above which are further fleshed out in this next source. We see that, based on his own interpretation of the indirect experimental evidence, Jerne challenged beliefs that were held by most immunologists at the time. Jerne, who was known to take the opposing viewpoint regularly in conversation, essentially took the opposing position of the main theories of the time and was given a Nobel Prize in 1984 for bringing together his ideas and the (presumably) incoherent work of others into a “coherent” narrative, thus providing evidence that the Nobel Prize is awarded to the best storytellers:

THEORIES OF ANTIBODIES PRODUCTION

“Niels K. Jerne, M.D., was awarded the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing three theories that form the basis of modern cellular immunology. He shared the Nobel jointly with César Milstein and Georges J.F. Köhler (immunologists honored for developing the hybridoma technique for producing monoclonal antibodies), for his theories concerning “the specificity in development and control of the immune system.”

Jerne’s three main theories challenged widely held views concerning the development of antibodies and laid new foundations for contemporary immunology. Jerne published his first theory, the “natural-selection theory” of antibody formation, in 1955. At the time, immunologists believed that specific antibodies were nonexistent until their corresponding antigens entered the system and served as templates upon which the antibodies were created. Another leading theory at the time held that antigens introduced into cells were modified by enzymes and that repeated antigen exposure caused replication of antibodies that were partial replicas of these enzyme-modified antigens. Jerne challenged both of these notions, hypothesizing that all antibodies are formed during fetal development and are present in the body from birth. He suggested that when an antigen enters the body, it binds to a pre-existing complementary antibody and stimulates the rapid production of identical antibodies.

With his second theory, first set forth in 1971, Jerne sought to explain how the immune system learns to distinguish self from non-self. Immunologists at the time thought that the body’s self-tolerance could not be inherited as a standard pattern but must be learned. Jerne theorized that this “learning” takes place in the thymus gland in the upper chest, where different populations of lymphocytes are exposed to histocompatibility antigens. Lymphocytes that recognize self-antigens are suppressed, whereas non-self lymphocytes, which have accumulated spontaneous mutations, develop and multiply into lymphocytes that can detect foreign antigens.

In 1974, Jerne published his third and most significant theory, his “network theory,” which revolutionized the way immunologists thought about adaptive immunity and immune regulation. Jerne posited that an antibody can be produced and bind to the antigen-specific variable region of another antibody, being called as anti-antibodies, a process, which, in turn, triggers a successive cascade of anti-anti-antibody production. This cascade broadens the diversity of the antibody population, and the network attains a state of balance under normal conditions, which can be perturbed and restored during additional antigen exposures.”

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.ndvsu.org/images/StudyMaterials/Micro/Theories-of-Antibody-Production.doc.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjv9pv8nuT3AhUfjIkEHYaDB3gQFnoECAYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1SEkGBAviylhNpfgoUJmnw

If we needed any extra evidence that Jerne’s contributions to immunology relate more to great science fiction writers than to scientific discoveries, this brief passage from Jerne’s friend and biographer Thomas Söderqvist may help to sell the portrait of a man who used his imagination over experimental evidence:

The Life and Work of Niels Kaj Jerne as a Source of Ethical Reflection

“There was no crucial experimental evidence to suggest either of these two theories. Of course, they had both been preceded by several years of experimental work, but in the final outcome they were both a matter of creative thinking – or to be more precise, speculation. The short space does not allow me to go into detail here. Suffice it to say that there is very good evidence in Jerne’s documents – now deposited in the Royal Library in Copenhagen – to suggest that the decisive factor that set him on the speculative track to the selection and the network theories was his view of his own personal self. To put it shortly, in both cases Jerne seems to have used his understanding of himself as a cognitive resource, as a metaphor, for his construction of the theories. From early on in life, he had thought of himself as a person who would never accept being moulded by the outer circumstances.”

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-3083.2002.01082.x

While it should be clear that Niels Jerne was more speculatist than scientist, was his Natural Selection theory, which amounted to conjecture created without firm evidence, actually accurate? Fortunately, we have hindsight to guide us rather than the proclamations of the Nobel Prize. We can see how Jerne’s theories played out by looking at the views of his contemporaries. Regarding his Natural Selection paper, this next source is from immunologist Melvin Cohn who basically claimed that Jerne’s paper was laughed at by himself and his colleagues for proposing the idea of self-replicating proteins:

THE WISDOM OF HINDSIGHT!

“I immediately presented this paper at our department journal club. The response was like mine; it seemed inconceivable that one could propose a self-replicating protein, given what we knew about DNA structure and genetics in 1955. Neither was there any need to convince me that template theories were ruled out. What was needed was a plausible selectionist theory, and it had to begin with a receptor on cells not in solution. Lennox and I were already at that point in our thinking. I was rather surprised that Delbruck submitted Jerne’s paper to Publications of the National Academy of Science, but immunology was only an eccentricity and could be allowed to run counter to the rest of biology.”

This final source is a 2012 article from molecular biologist and immunologist Donald Forsdyke who detailed how Jerne’s theory “somehow” explained the experimental observations of others in a better way than all of the other theories. Forsdyke proclaimed this even though he admitted that Jerne’s ideas are considered primitive to Paul Ehrlich’s own theoretical observations from over 55 years prior and that, due to the rapid rise of molecular biology, Jerne’s ideas were essentially “proven” wrong at the time of publication:

Immunology (1955-1975): The Natural Selection Theory, the Two Signal Hypothesis and Positive Repertoire Selection

“For both Jerne and myself, ideas were triggered by experimental observations relating to ‘natural antibody’ – antibody present in an organism prior to that organism’s exposure to the specific antigen to which the antibody could bind. When studying the reactivity of viruses with blood serum in the spring of 1954, Jerne unexpectedly discovered an activity – dubbed ‘P-star’ – which he interpreted as due to natural antibody. This set off a train of thought leading to a theory of antibody formation that seemed to unify disparate observations better than some alternatives (Jerne 1955). He postulated a process by which an organism would, somehow, randomly generate a repertoire of antibodies covering a wide range of specificities. An incoming antigen (e.g. virus) would select the antibody that best complemented it, and would then conduct it to a cell where the antibody would, somehow, be replicated and secreted in large quantities (thus increasing protection against the virus). At the time of their first ‘natural’ generation, antibodies that reacted with ‘self’ antigens would have been absorbed by ‘structures in the body of the animal itself’ so that auto-immune reactivity would not develop.”

“From a ‘presentist’ perspective (Harrison 1987), Jerne’s first theoretical immunology paper (the natural selection theory; Jerne, 1955) later appeared primitive relative to the sophisticated cellular hypothesis advanced by Ehrlich a half century earlier (Forsdyke 1995a). Indeed, so rapid were developments in molecular biology that, by the time of publication Jerne’s proposed mechanisms were already obsolete (Cohn 1994). Protein directly begetting protein (more antibody) was inconsistent with much of genetics and molecular biology. If a cell could somehow ‘read’ a protein and turn that information into nucleic acid, Jerne’s idea might have worked, because nucleic acid can beget nucleic acid, and that nucleic acid can then beget more of the protein. But no mechanism for directly ‘reading’ a protein into nucleic acid was known then, or has since emerged.”

https://www.queensu.ca/academia/forsdyke/theorimm8.htm

As we can see that Jerne’s Natural Selection ideas were considered obsolete by the time he published them, we really don’t need to waste too much more of our time on his speculation disguised as a theory. Presented below is the entire 9-page paper from 1955 by Niels Jerne:

THE NATURAL-SELECTION THEORY OF ANTIBODY FORMATION

An immense amount of experimental data related to the problem of antibody formation has accumulated. Theories offering a basic interpretation of these observations have, in contrast, been few. The theory formulated in the present paper, though highly speculative, attempts to provide a framework for the interpretation of the main features of antibody appearance in response to the injection of antigen into an animal.

Two views concerning the mechanism of antibody formation are at present most widely favored. One is the “antigen-template” theory, developed by Breinl, Haurowitz, Mudd, Alexander, and Pauling. This theory assumes that antibodies can be produced only by cells in which the antigen is present. The specific affinity of an antibody molecule toward the antigen is due to a complementarity ln structure derived from the folding of part of the polypeptide chain of a globulin molecule in direct contact with a determinant or haptenic region of the antigen. The antigen thus serves as a template in the final stage of formation of a globulin molecule.

The other view tries to establish a similarity between antibody formation and adaptive enzyme formation and allows for the continued production of antibody
after the antigen has disappeared from the body. This is the “modified-enzyme” theory, formulated by Burnet and Fenner. They propose that the introduction of an antigen into cells, containing enzymes directed toward the disposal of effete cells and cellular debris from the organism itself, induces the formation of “enzymic units” adapted toward the destruction of the antigen. A renewed contact with the antigen stimulates the replication of these enzymic units. Circulating antibody molecules are partial replicas of the modified enzymic units, carrying specificity but lacking enzymic action.

The “natural-selection” theory, proposed in the present paper, may be stated as follows: The role of the antigen is neither that of a template nor that of an enzyme modifier. The antigen is solely a selective carrier of spontaneously circulating antibody to a system of cells which can reproduce this antibody. Globulin molecules are continuously being synthesized in an enormous variety of different configurations. Among the population of circulating globulin molecules there will, spontaneously, be fractions possessing affinity toward any antigen to which the animal can respond. These are the so-called “natural” antibodies. The introduction of an antigen into the blood or into the lymph leads to the selective attachment to the antigen surface of those globulin molecules which happen to have a complementary configuration. The antigen carrying these molecules may then be engulfed by a phagocytic cell. When the globulin molecules thus brought into a cell have been dissociated from., the surface of the antigen, the antigen has accomplished its role and can be eliminated.

The introduction of the selected globulin molecules into a cell or the transfer of these molecules into another cell is the signal for the synthesis or reproduction of molecules identical to those introduced, i.e., of specific antibodies. The release of these antibody molecules into the circulation will shift the composition of the population of circulating globulin molecules. Antigen, secondarily introduced into the circulation, now meets a larger concentration of specific molecules and carries a larger quantity of these, selected for the better-fitting ones, to the antibody-producing apparatus, which already contains many cells engaged in the synthesis of molecules of these types of specificity. This leads to the more rapid reproduction of an
improved assortment of antibody molecules, followed by a further directional shift in the circulating globulin population. The reproduction need not be highly faithful; copying mistakes will be harmless, and may occasionally produce an improved fit. When, in the absence of further antigen stimuli, no more pressure is exerted, the population will slowly revert toward a normal condition of equilibrium. The normal equilibrium may be upheld by a continuous reproduction of samples of the population of molecules circulating at any given moment. Somewhere, however, either in the beginning of the life of an animal or continuously, a spontaneous production of random specificities must take place. The spontaneously produced globulin molecules may be formed only in small numbers. Those among them that will attach themselves to structures in the body of the animal itself will be removed and will therefore not be available for reproduction. The absence of globulin molecules carrying these specificities will prevent a response to antigens of these specific types.

Discussion.-Burnet and Fenner list a number of essential immunological observations which are not satisfactorily accounted for by the antigen-template theory.

  1. The booster effect. A secondary stimulus with the same antigen provokes a more active production of antibody than does a primary stimulus. According to the natural-selection theory, this would be due to the fact that antigen injected secondarily encounters a larger concentration of specific antibodies in the circulation
    than were present at the time for the primary injection. More antibody molecules are therefore brought to the globulin-reproducing cells.
  2. The change in character of the antibody produced in response to repeated inoculations of the same antigen. The main changes observed are from “low-grade” antibody of low combining capacity, produced in the beginning of an immunization course, toward “more avid” antibody of high combining power, produced later. Besides this improvement in quality, an increase has been observed in the range of cross-reactions with related antigens. The present theory explains this development by natural selection. At the time of the primary stimulus the antigen injected finds only few globulin molecules in the circulation, showing various degrees of affinity toward the antigen surface patterns. At the time of a later stimulus in the course of immunization, when these molecules have been replicated in large numbers, the antigen will find a larger concentration of globulin molecules fitting all its surface patterns and will preferentially carry those which show the highest combining capacity to the globulin-reproducing cells.
  3. The apparent exponential rise in circulating antibody during the first period of production. On the present theory this may be due to an autocatalytic replication of the specific globulin molecules and to a multiplication of the cells.
  4. The continued production of antibody for long periods. The antigen-template theory could deal satisfactorily with this point if it could be shown that sufficient antigen remains present during the entire period of antibody production. On the other hand, this theory would have to be abandoned if it could be shown that antibody production continues after the antigen has been eliminated from the body. The latter view is held by Burnet and Fenner, for the following reasons: Since circulating antibody has a rapid turnover, it must be continuously synthesized for long periods, and not only by the cells originally stimulated. The reticuloendothelial cells and the plasma cells which are believed to be engaged in antibody production are short-lived cells. The repeated transfer of the original antigen from a disintegrating cell to another appropriate cell seems unlikely. According to the natural-selection theory, the continued antibody production after elimination of the antigen is natural, because the antigen will have completed its role when it has carried the antibody molecules to the reproducing apparatus.
  5. To this list we would add the observation that the surface of particulate antigens seems to play a dominant part in determining the specificity of the antibody molecules produced. Avery and Neil found that the antibody produced against suspensions of pneumococci is mainly directed against the surface presented by these bacteria. White who studied the antibody produced as a response to injections of Salmonella cells, concluded that “it would seem that the antiserum of the bacillus is overwhelmingly the antiserum of its surface rather than of its substance.” Henle et al. studying spermatozoa as antigens, and Morgan who investigated the antigens of Shigella, arrived at similar conclusions. This predominance of the antigen surface is in harmony with the natural-selection theory of antibody formation because the globulin molecules that are eligible for preferential reproduction are those that can attach themselves to the surface presented by the antigen before it is removed from the circulation. It would seem, however, to involve the antigen-template theory in difficulties. From the well-known experiments of Topley it can be calculated that a rabbit, after two intravenous injections of formalin-killed Salmonella cells, synthesized about 100,000 antibody molecules per second per bacterium that had been injected, and continued this rate of production for a period of many weeks. If we imagine that the bacteria serving as antigen templates were not broken down but resided in toto each in an antibody producing cell, this would entail impossible quantitative implications. If, however, the bacteria were broken down into many fragments, how would a cell in which one of these fragments served as antigen template be able to distinguish what part of the fragment had originally been at the surface of the intact bacterium?

It seems worthwhile to consider more closely a theory which seems to provide simple explanations of these important immunological phenomena. Except for specificity toward an antigen, no known properties distinguish normal serum globulin from antibody. In the absence of antigen no directional pressure is imposed upon globulin synthesis, and it seems reasonable to assume that a great variety of configurations, due, perhaps, to various amino acid sequences at the specific sites of the globulin molecules, may develop at random.

An immense body of experimental data testifies to the fact that normal sera from one animal species may contain antibodies against an enormous number of different
bacteria, some of which are not known to be natural parasites to this species. Though these natural antibodies are often supposed to have evolved as a result of previous exposure to antigen, this attitude seems merely to reflect the definition of an antibody as a substance produced in response to an antigen, which, however, does not imply that antibodies are not produced in the absence of, and prior to, exposure to an antigen. Doerr, summing up an extensive review of experimental data in this field, states: “We must accept that it has been definitely demonstrated that natural antibodies can develop without an antigenic stimulus, and that this spontaneous formation is by far the most frequent origin of natural antibodies against bacteria erythrocytes, toxins, and virus particles.” The slight phagocytosis promoting activity found in normal sera has been ascribed to the presence of normal specific opsonins. These substances may be equated with natural antibodies. Their activity can be specifically inhibited by hapten. It has been observed that the ability of a rabbit to produce antibodies against bovine serum albumin or against an artificially conjugated antigen is related to the rate at which the injected antigen is removed from the blood. In poorly responding animals the antigen remains in circulation much longer than in good responders. We interpret this in terms of the spontaneous presence in the circulation of less or more specificially fitting globulin, which determines both the rate of phagocytic removal and the amount of specific globulin that will be carried to the globulin-repioducing system.

The methods available for demonstrating the presence of specific antibody in serum rarely permit the detection of concentrations lower than 10^12 or 10^11 antibody molecules per milliliter. Even diphtheria antitoxin, by the extremely sensitive rabbit skin test, cannot be detected in dilutions containing less that 5 X 10^10 antitoxin molecules per milliliter. Most sensitive, probably, is the demonstration of antibodies against bacteriophage, which can be measured quantitatively in sera from normal animals.

Among the comparatively small number, perhaps a few thousand, of antigen-antibody systems investigated, cross-reactions are by no means rare, suggesting that the number of specific configurations which a globulin molecule can exhibit is large but limited. Since normal mammalian serum contains more than 10^17 globulin molecules per milliliter, these may include a million 10^11 fractions of different specificity. This would seem an amply sufficient number.

In what type of cells does the postulated replication of globulin molecules take place? The lymphoid tissue contains cells which are capable of producing globulin and antibody. This tissue is scattered throughout the body but is mainly concentrated in the bone marrow, the thymus, the spleen, the appendix, and various lymph nodes, totaling about 0.5 percent of the body weight. The mesenchymal reticulum cells of the lymphoid tissue develop through a matuiation series to one of three types of cells: phagocytic endothelial cells, lymphocytes, and plasma cells. The developmental and functional relationship between these closely associated ceils is not clear. The phagocytic cells take up foreign particles from the blood and the lymph, and, since the blood is filtered through bone marrow and spleen, and the lymph through the lymph nodes, circulating phagocytes also come into close contact with the lymphoid tissue. Lymphocytes have a life-span of not more than a few days. It can be calculated that the daily output in the rabbit is of the order of 10^10 of these cells. They circulate in the lymph and blood, and many seem to return to the germinal centers of the lymphoid tissue. The lymphocytes seem to pioduce some gamma globulin; but whether they take part in the production of antibody after an antigen stimulus is undecided. The plasma cells, on the other hand, are definitely involved. In conditions of hyperglobulinemia and of hyperimmunization there is a large increase in plasma cells in the bone marrow and elsewhere. The injection of an antigen into the tissues of an animal leads to the production of antibody in the lymph node draining the injection site. During the days following the injection this lymph node exhibits marked mitotic activity. There is an increase in weight and a parallel increase in desoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). This is followed by a large increase in ribonucleic acid (RNA), which reaches a peak around the fifth day, coinciding with the period of greatest antibody increase. The RNA is mainly concentrated in the freely multiplying plasma cell precursors. The antibody content of the lymph leaving the lymph node may be a hundred times greater than that of the lymph entering the node, and most of this antibody leaving the node is inclosed in cells suspended in the lymph plasma, about 5 percent of which may be plasma cells, the rest lymphocytes. After intravenous injections antibody-producing plasma cells can be recognized in the red pulp of the spleen.

The thymus, though rich in nucleic acid and lymphocytes, develops no plasma cells and does not show any immunological activity. Burnet and Fenner, in spite of this, suggest that the lymphocytes may be responsible for maintenance of low levels of antibody long after the plasma cells have initiated the formation during the peak phase of the antibody response. Though they infer that, if this suggestion is true, the immunological function of the lymphocytes can hardly be their major one, it would be a different matter if the function included the maintenance of the circulating gamma globulin. In a rabbit the half-life of circulating globulin is about 5 days. This means that the rabbit must daily synthesize about 10^18 globulin molecules. For 10^10 lymphocytes to accomplish this task, each would have to synthesize about a thousand globulin molecules per second.

If it were true that antibody production after an antigen stimulus is the preferential replication of selected globulin molecules, the production of normal globulin might be an unselective reproduction of the circulating globulin. This could be accomplished either by a mechanism by which a small fraction of circulating globulin could enter into lymphoid cells or by the transfer of synthesizing units from worn-out lymphocytes and plasma cells, returning to the lymphoid tissue, to young cells. In this way the animal would tend to preserve the spectrum of globulin specificities already present, and a drastic change could be accomplished only by a mechanism of preferential replication of a selected fraction of the circulating globulin. This would essentially reduce the production of both normal gamma globulin and antibody to one mechanism: selective and unselective reproduction of circulating globulin molecules.

Somewhere in the beginning, however, we have to postulate a spontaneous production of globulin molecules of a great variety of random specificities in order to start the process. Possibly a specialized lymphoid tissue, such as that of the thymus which is most active in embryonic and early independent life and decays soon after, is engaged in this function. If this small spontaneous production of globulin took place mainly in embryonic and early life, before the much larger body of cells later engaged in maintaining the composition of the circulating globulin by reproduction had started to function, the early removal of a specific fraction of molecules might lead to the permanent disappearance of this type of specificity. Such a mechanism could explain the absence in the blood of specific globulin against antigens of the organism itself, since such globulin molecules, if spontaneously produced, would be removed by attachment to the auto-antigens and would no longer be available for reproduction. The absent specificities would include, besides auto-antibodies, natural antibody against antigens implanted in the animal during embryonic life. The absence from the circulation of such antibodies would, in turn, prevent response to a later antigenic stimulus of this type.

This might occur also if a specific type of globulin molecules could be removed from an adult animal, and might be the explanation of the “immunological paralysis” described by Felton: the blocking of subsequent response by the administration of a large initial dose of pneumococcal polysaccharide. This hapten will induce the formation of antibody in mice only if the dose injected does not exceed a certain very small amount. Felton reported that only doses below 0.001 mg. of a certain preparation of such a polysaccharide were effective in engendering antibody formation in mice. Thus the injection of more than 10^14 molecules of polysaccharide of molecular weight 4,000 inhibited the response. Perhaps a certain fraction of the haptenic particles, by association with a protein, are capable of antigenic stimulation but cannot act when the larger, purely haptenic fraction eliminates all the spontaneously present antibody molecules.

The crucial point of the natural-selection theory is the postulate that the introduction of antibody molecules into appropriate cells can be the signal for the production of more of their kind. This notion is unfamiliar. However, as nothing is known about the mechanism of antibody synthesis in a cell, it would seem a priori more reasonable to assume that an animal can translate a stimulus, introduced by protein molecules which it has itself at one time produced, into an increased synthesis of this same type of molecules than to suppose that an animal can utilize all sorts of foreign substances and can build them functionally and semipermanently into the most intimate parts of its globulin-synthesizing cells.

Any attempt to elaborate this notion into a picture of what may be the mechanism of a replication of specific protein must, at present, be highly speculative. It would seem profitable if, as the modified-enzyme theory tries to do, an analogy could be established on the cellular level between the induction of antibody synthesis in animals and the induction of adaptive enzyme synthesis in microorganisms, since both entail the increased formation of a specific protein. Recent discussions of the nature of adaptive enzyme formation are, however, also still in a speculative stage.

Prior to induction, a small amount of the enzyme appears already to be spontaneously present in the adaptable cells. Induction may involve the replication either of the enzyme molecules or of the elements which form the enzyme. Since RNA seems to play a part in the organization of protein synthesis, it has been suggested that RNA acts as a template on which amino acids are assembled. RNA may thus determine the order of amino acid residues in the protein chain, and. reciprocally, as suggested by Caldwell and Hinshelwood, a protein molecule may determine the order of the nucleotides in the synthesis of RNA. A reversible situation of this kind, as Gale has pointed out, might account for his finding that labeled amino acids are incorporated into proteins of cells that have been prevented from synthesizing new protein by the lack of other essential amino acids. RNA does not seem to be synthesized unless amino acids are present, and optimal RNA synthesis occurs under conditions of optimal protein synthesis. If these syntheses were coupled, it would seem feasible that the introduction of a protein molecule into a cell could initiate a replication of its specific structure.

A mechanism of this sort would be needed for the present theory of antibody formation. If RNA is the template on which protein molecules are assembled, an antibody molecule introduced into the appropriate cell must be able either to initiate the synthesis of specific RNA or to combine with pre-existing RNA. The latter possibility would imply either that the cells already contain a large variety of RNA structures of various specificities-i.e., that a cell is already potentially capable of synthesizing a large variety of globulin molecules of different specificity, the desired type being favored by the introduction of a globulin molecule of this type-or that there are only a smaller variety of different RNA structures present in the cell, upon a related one of which the inducing antibody molecule can impose its specificity.

The present theory predicts that the amount of antibody produced in response to an antigen stimulus depends on the concentration of a type of circulating globulin which can attach itself specifically to the surface of this antigen. This could be tested in experiments of the following types.

The rate of antibody production after a primary stimulus should depend on the concentration of spontaneous antibody already present in the circulation. It is a common observation that the response to an antigen of an animal whose serum already contains a low level of specific antibody is greater than that of animals in which no antibody can be demonstrated. It should be possible, therefore, to increase the rate of antibody production by increasing the concentration of antibody circulating at the time of the primary antigenic stimulus. By introducing antibody from an immunized donor animal into the blood of a recipient animal, prior to the injection of the antigen into the latter, enhanced antibody response to this antigen stimulus should be expected. The common finding in such an experiment is a depression of the response. However, experiments designed to test this point should take into account the fact that even when an animal of the same species is used as the donor of antibody, individual immunological differences residing in the globulin molecules may prevent the recipient animal from utilizing the globulin molecules supplied by the donor. Experiments would therefore have to be carried out between identical twins. Also, when serum from a donor animal is used, the possibility should be considered that the antibody molecules may have been altered, during clotting, separation, and storage of the serum, from the form in which they existed in the circulating plasma.

Also, it should be possible to decrease the rate of antibody production by decreasing the concentration of antibody circulating at the time of the antigenic stimulus. Thus the injection of the corresponding hapten into the blood, prior to the antigen, should depress the antibody response. This may be the explanation of Felton’s experiments mentioned above. The booster effect, i.e., the greater response to a secondary antigenic stimulus than to a primary one, should depend on the presence, at the time of the secondary stimulus, of antibody due to the primary stimulus. It has been observed that a booster response to diphtheria toxin does not occur in an animal after the effects, produced by the primary stimulus, have worn off and antitoxin is no longer demonstrable.

In cases in which cross-reactivity between two pairs of antigen-antibody systems is due to related surface patterns, a secondary stimulus with the second antigen following a primary stimulus with the first antigen may lead to the increased production of antibody of the first type. The second antigen would carry many molecules, formed in response to the first antigen, to the reproducing cells. This is what is usually called the “anamnestic reaction.”

Summary.-A theory of antibody formation is proposed which postulates the spontaneous presence, in the blood of an animal, of small numbers of antibody molecules against all antigens to which the animal can respond, and delegates to the antigen the sole role of carrying such specific globulin molecules from the circulation into cells in which these molecules can induce the production of more of their kind.

The theory offers an explanation for the presence in blood of a large pool of normal globulins, for the presence of natural antibodies, for the dominant part played by the surface of antigen particles in antibody induction, for the change in character of antibody during the course of immunization (by natural selection), for the exponential increase during part of antibody production, for a continued production of antibody in the absence of the antigen, for the booster phenomenon, for the absence of auto-antibodies, for immunological paralysis and haptenic inhibition, and for the anamnestic reaction.

doi: 10.1073/pnas.41.11.849

In Summary:

  • Niels Jerne is known for three main ideas that he added to the antibody narrative:
    1. Instead of the body creating antibodies from the antigens, the immune system already had all of the antibodies available in order to fight off any pathogen (Jerne’s Natural Selection theory proposed in 1955).
    2. The immune system can identify and distinguish what is from the “self” (or host) and what is not (proposed by Jerne in 1971).
    3. The idea that not only do antibodies attach to an antigen, but that they can also become attached to other antibodies (which became known as the Network theory proposed by Jerne in 1974)
  • He was recognized for these three “important” theories (i.e. ideas) of immunology that together offered a coherent general image of the immune defenses
  • They were built on findings from research that Dr. Jerne himself carried out, and also incorporated the fruits of work by many other researchers (in other words, Jerne took from his own and the many unrelated experimental observations/data of others to create his own story on how it all worked)
  • The first theory provided an explanation, which was generally accepted by 1984, of the fashion in which antibodies are generated to match any possible bacterium, “virus” or other intruder into the body
  • The second theory presented an inclusive picture of how the immune defense system develops and matures
  • The third theory was a logical and elaborate explanation of the interactive processes by which the body’s immune system goes into action, when needed to fight disease, and later lapses into inactivity when it is no longer needed
  • Jerne shared the 1984 Nobel Prize jointly with César Milstein and Georges J.F. Köhler (immunologists honored for developing the hybridoma technique for producing monoclonal antibodies), for his theories concerning “the specificity in development and control of the immune system.”
  • Jerne’s three main theories (i.e. ideas) challenged widely held views concerning the development of antibodies and laid new foundations for contemporary immunology
  • At the time, immunologists believed that specific antibodies were nonexistent until their corresponding antigens entered the system and served as templates upon which the antibodies were created (Direct Template theory)
  • Another leading theory at the time held that antigens introduced into cells were modified by enzymes and that repeated antigen exposure caused replication of antibodies that were partial replicas of these enzyme-modified antigens (Indirect Template theory)
  • Jerne challenged both of these notions, hypothesizing that all antibodies are formed during fetal development and are present in the body from birth
  • He suggested that when an antigen enters the body, it binds to a pre-existing complementary antibody and stimulates the rapid production of identical antibodies
  • Immunologists at the time thought that the body’s self-tolerance could not be inherited as a standard pattern but must be learned
  • Jerne theorized in 1971 that this “learning” takes place in the thymus gland in the upper chest, where different populations of lymphocytes are exposed to histocompatibility antigens
  • Jerne posited (i.e. assumed as a fact) in 1974 that an antibody can be produced and bind to the antigen-specific variable region of another antibody, being called as anti-antibodies, a process, which, in turn, triggers a successive cascade of anti-anti-antibody production
  • There was no crucial experimental evidence to suggest either of Jerne’s two theories
  • Of course, they had both been preceded by several years of experimental work, but in the final outcome they were both a matter of creative thinking – or to be more precise, speculation
  • There is very good evidence in Jerne’s documents – now deposited in the Royal Library in Copenhagen – to suggest that the decisive factor that set him on the speculative track to the selection and the network theories was his view of his own personal self
  • To put it shortly, in both cases Jerne seemed to have used his understanding of himself as a cognitive resource, as a metaphor, for his construction of the theories
  • When immunologist Melvin Cohn submitted Jerne’s 1955 paper to his colleagues, the response was unanimous in that it seemed inconceivable that one could propose a self-replicating protein, given what they knew about DNA structure and genetics in 1955
  • Cohn stated that what was needed was a plausible selectionist theory, and it had to begin with a receptor on cells not in solution
  • Cohn also stated that immunology was only an eccentricity and could be allowed to run counter to the rest of biology
  • According to microbilogist/immunologist Donald Forsdyke, Jerne’s ideas were triggered by experimental observations relating to ‘natural antibody’ – antibody present in an organism prior to that organism’s exposure to the specific antigen to which the antibody could bind
  • When studying the reactivity of “viruses” with blood serum in the spring of 1954, Jerne unexpectedly discovered an activity – dubbed ‘P-star’ – which he interpreted as due to natural antibody
  • This set off a train of thought leading to a theory of antibody formation that seemed to unify disparate observations better than some alternatives
  • He postulated a process by which an organism would somehow randomly generate a repertoire of antibodies covering a wide range of specificities
  • An incoming antigen (e.g. “virus”) would select the antibody that best complemented it, and would then conduct it to a cell where the antibody would somehow be replicated and secreted in large quantities (thus increasing protection against the “virus”)
  • Jerne’s first theoretical immunology paper (the natural selection theory; Jerne, 1955) later appeared primitive relative to the sophisticated cellular hypothesis advanced by Ehrlich a half century earlier in 1900
  • Rapid developments in molecular biology made Jerne’s proposed mechanisms already obsolete by the time of publication
  • Jerne’s idea of protein directly begetting protein (more antibody) was inconsistent with much of genetics and molecular biology
  • No mechanism for directly ‘reading’ a protein into nucleic acid was known then, or has since emerged
  • An immense amount of experimental data related to the problem of antibody formation has accumulated
  • Theories offering a basic interpretation of these observations have, in contrast, been few
  • Jerne admitted that his theory was highly speculative and attempted to provide a framework for the interpretation of the main features of antibody appearance in response to the injection of antigen into an animal
  • Two views concerning the mechanism of antibody formation at that time were most widely favored
    1. Direct Template
      • The “antigen-template” theory, developed by Breinl, Haurowitz,  Mudd, Alexander, and Pauling
      • This theory assumes that antibodies can be produced only by cells in which the antigen is present
    2. Indirect Template
      • The “modified-enzyme” theory, formulated by Burnet and Fenner
      • They proposed that the introduction of an antigen into cells, containing enzymes directed toward the disposal of effete cells and cellular debris from the organism itself, induces the formation of “enzymic units” adapted toward the destruction of the antigen
      • They tried to establish a similarity between antibody formation and adaptive enzyme formation and allowed for the continued production of antibody after the antigen has disappeared from the body
  • In Natural Selection, the role of the antigen is neither that of a template nor that of an enzyme modifier (i.e. in opposition to both Direct and Indirect theory)
  • The antigen is solely a selective carrier of spontaneously circulating antibody to a system of cells which can reproduce this antibody
  • The introduction of the selected globulin molecules into a cell or the transfer of these molecules into another cell is the signal for the synthesis or reproduction of molecules identical to those introduced, i.e., of specific antibodies
  • Somewhere, however, either in the beginning of the life of an animal or continuously, a spontaneous production of random specificities must take place
  • Burnet and Fenner list a number of essential immunological observations which are not satisfactorily accounted for by the antigen-template theory
  • According to the natural-selection theory, the booster effect is because the antigen injected secondarily encounters a larger concentration of specific antibodies in the circulation than were present at the time for the primary injection
  • There is a change in character of the antibody produced in response to repeated inoculations of the same antigen
  • The main changes observed are from “low-grade” antibody of low combining capacity, produced in the beginning of an immunization course, toward “more avid” antibody of high combining power, produced later
  • Besides this improvement in quality, an increase had been observed in the range of cross-reactions with related antigens
  • According to Natural Selection, the apparent exponential rise in circulating antibody during the first period of production may be due to an autocatalytic replication of the specific globulin molecules and to a multiplication of the cells
  • The antigen-template theory could deal satisfactorily with antibodies persisting after the antigen is gone if it could be shown that sufficient antigen remains present during the entire period of antibody production
  • On the other hand, this theory would have to be abandoned if it could be shown that antibody production continues after the antigen has been eliminated from the body
  • The reticuloendothelial cells and the plasma cells are believed to be engaged in antibody production are short-lived cells
  • According to the natural-selection theory, the continued antibody production after elimination of the antigen is natural, because the antigen will have completed its role when it has carried the antibody molecules to the reproducing apparatus
  • The observation that the surface of particulate antigens seems to play a dominant part in determining the specificity of the antibody molecules produced
  • According to Jerne, this predominance of the antigen surface is in harmony with the natural-selection theory of antibody formation because the globulin molecules that are eligible for preferential reproduction are those that can attach themselves to the surface presented by the antigen before it is removed from the circulation
  • Except for specificity toward an antigen, no known properties distinguish normal serum globulin from antibody
  • In the absence of antigen no directional pressure is imposed upon globulin synthesis, and it seemed reasonable to assume that a great variety of configurations, due, perhaps, to various amino acid sequences at the specific sites of the globulin molecules, may develop at random
  • Doerr, summing up an extensive review of experimental data in this field, stated: “We must accept that it has been definitely demonstrated that natural antibodies can develop without an antigenic stimulus, and that this spontaneous formation is by far the most frequent origin of natural antibodies against bacteria erythrocytes, toxins, and virus particles.”
  • The slight phagocytosis promoting activity found in normal sera has been ascribed to the presence of normal specific opsonins and these substances may be equated with natural antibodies
  • In poorly responding animals the antigen remains in circulation much longer than in good responders which was interpreted by Jerne to mean the spontaneous presence in the circulation of less or more specificially fitting globulin, which determines both the rate of phagocytic removal and the amount of specific globulin, will be carried to the globulin-repioducing system
  • The methods available for demonstrating the presence of specific antibody in serum (i.e. indirectly) rarely permit the detection of concentrations lower than 10^12 or 10^11 antibody molecules per milliliter
  • Among the comparatively small number, perhaps a few thousand, of antigen-antibody systems investigated, cross-reactions are by no means rare, suggesting that the number of specific configurations which a globulin molecule can exhibit is large but limited
  • The developmental and functional relationship between phagocytic endothelial cells, lymphocytes, and plasma cells is not clear
  • The lymphocytes seem to pioduce some gamma globulin; but whether they take part in the production of antibody after an antigen stimulus is undecided
  • Jerne believed that the plasma cells are definitely involved in antibody production
  • In conditions of hyperglobulinemia and of hyperimmunization there is a large increase in plasma cells in the bone marrow and elsewhere
  • After intravenous injections antibody-producing plasma cells can be recognized in the red pulp of the spleen
  • In other word, Jerne equated seeing increased plasma cells as signs of antibodies without directly observing antibodies
  • The thymus, though rich in nucleic acid and lymphocytes, develops no plasma cells and does not show any immunological activity
  • Burnet and Fenner, in spite of this, suggest that the lymphocytes may be responsible for maintenance of low levels of antibody long after the plasma cells have initiated the formation during the peak phase of the antibody response
  • Though they infer that, if this suggestion is true, the immunological function of the lymphocytes can hardly be a major one
  • If it were true that antibody production after an antigen stimulus is the preferential replication of selected globulin molecules, the production of normal globulin might be an unselective reproduction of the circulating globulin
  • This could be accomplished either by a mechanism by which a small fraction of circulating globulin could enter into lymphoid cells or by the transfer of synthesizing units from worn-out lymphocytes and plasma cells, returning to the lymphoid tissue, to young cells (i.e. Jerne is throwing out random possibilities from his imagination for how this could work)
  • Jerne felt it must be postulated that, somewhere in the beginning, a spontaneous production of globulin molecules of a great variety of random specificities in order to start the process
  • Possibly a specialized lymphoid tissue, such as that of the thymus which is most active in embryonic and early independent life and decays soon after, is engaged in this function
  • He claimed that if this small spontaneous production of globulin took place mainly in embryonic and early life, before the much larger body of cells later engaged in maintaining the composition of the circulating globulin by reproduction had started to function, the early removal of a specific fraction of molecules might lead to the permanent disappearance of this type of specificity
  • He felt such a mechanism could explain the absence in the blood of specific globulin against antigens of the organism itself
  • This might occur also if a specific type of globulin molecules could be removed from an adult animal, and might be the explanation of the “immunological paralysis” described by Felton
  • He felt that perhaps a certain fraction of the haptenic particles, by association with a protein, are capable of antigenic stimulation but cannot act when the larger, purely haptenic fraction eliminates all the spontaneously present antibody molecules
  • The crucial point of the natural-selection theory is the postulate that the introduction of antibody molecules into appropriate cells can be the signal for the production of more of their kind
  • Jerne admitted that this notion was unfamiliar, however, as nothing is known about the mechanism of antibody synthesis in a cell, he felt it would seem a priori more reasonable to assume that an animal can translate a stimulus, introduced by protein molecules which it has itself at one time produced, into an increased synthesis of this same type of molecules than to suppose that an animal can utilize all sorts of foreign substances and can build them functionally and semipermanently into the most intimate parts of its globulin-synthesizing cells
  • He stated that any attempt to elaborate on this notion into a picture of what may be the mechanism of a replication of specific protein must be highly speculative
  • Discussions of the nature of adaptive enzyme formation (as championed by Burnet) were also in a speculative stage
  • A mechanism of this sort would be needed for the present theory of antibody formation: if RNA is the template on which protein molecules are assembled, an antibody molecule introduced into the appropriate cell must be able either to initiate the synthesis of specific RNA or to combine with pre-existing RNA
  • The present theory predicted that the amount of antibody produced in response to an antigen stimulus depends on the concentration of a type of circulating globulin which can attach itself specifically to the surface of this antigen
  • By introducing antibody from an immunized donor animal into the blood of a recipient animal, prior to the injection of the antigen into the latter, enhanced antibody response to this antigen stimulus should be expected, yet the common finding in such an experiment is a depression of the response
  • When serum from a donor animal is used, the possibility should be considered that the antibody molecules may have been altered, during clotting, separation, and storage of the serum, from the form in which they existed in the circulating plasma
  • It had been observed that a booster response to diphtheria toxin does not occur in an animal after the effects, produced by the primary stimulus, have worn off and antitoxin is no longer demonstrable
  • In cases in which cross-reactivity between two pairs of antigen-antibody systems is due to related surface patterns, a secondary stimulus with the second antigen following a primary stimulus with the first antigen may lead to the increased production of antibody of the first type
  • Jerne summarized his theory of antibody formation as a proposal which postulates the spontaneous presence, in the blood of an animal, of small numbers of antibody molecules against all antigens to which the animal can respond, and delegates to the antigen the sole role of carrying such specific globulin molecules from the circulation into cells in which these molecules can induce the production of more of their kind
  • In other words, Jerne proposed a theory that antibodies exist naturally in the blood of animals as these entities still remained unseen in a purified/isolated state
  • Jerne felt his theory offered an explanation for:
    1. The presence in blood of a large pool of normal globulins
    2. The presence of natural antibodies
    3. The dominant part played by the surface of antigen particles in antibody induction
    4. The change in character of antibody during the course of immunization (by natural selection)
    5. The exponential increase during part of antibody production
    6. The continued production of antibody in the absence of the antigen
    7. The booster phenomenon
    8. The absence of auto-antibodies
    9. The immunological paralysis and haptenic inhibition
    10. The anamnestic reaction

And they had deep discussions on many nights, leaving Bussard [another immunologist] with the conclusion that Jerne was a person who primarily “plays with ideas….he plays in his own mind”’

http://brunolemaitre.ch/narcissism-science/testp-page/

Niels Jerne created theories with no crucial experimental evidence to back them up. His ideas belonged to the realm of the artist. He used creative thinking to conjure up fantasies that amounted to nothing but pure speculation, as admitted in his biography as well as by Jerne himself in the first paragraph of his 1955 paper. Jerne used his own view of his personal self to construct his ideas into theories. As the best storytellers often do, he weaved together disparate elements from unrelated experiments into a “cohesive general image” of how antibodies form and function within the body, even though the entities themselves had never been seen and this entire process could never be observed. Jerne was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1984 “for theories concerning the specificity in development and control of the immune system.” In other words, he was awarded for his fictional storytelling skills.

Because of Jerne’s contributions, there were now four competing narratives in 1955 explaining the unobservable. While these are all given the name “theories,” they really should be called hypotheses as nowhere in the creation of these differing tentative explanations was the scientific method ever applied. The entities being discussed were still unpurified and never isolated. Antibodies had never been observed. They were not available to be used as a physically existing independent variable in order to determine cause and effect. They were assumed to be within the blood and causing certain chemical reactions during experimentation. Thus, the unrelated experimental data could be interpreted many different ways and depended upon the eye and imagination of the beholder in order to try and explain the contradictory findings. The data needed to be continually massaged into a “cohesive general image” that would be accepted by the majority as the truth rather than the pure speculation that it actually was. In essence, these antibody “theories” amount to nothing more than ink blots waiting to be reinterpreted by the next observer.

108 comments

    1. In the article you linked, Richet says, “The anaphylactogen poison is an additional chemical substance produced by the subject’s body that will forever after be contained in the subject’s blood.”

      Why would the body produce a poison? And why would it keep a poison around in the blood instead of cleaning it out or at least socking it away somewhere more innocuous like in a tumor, mole, or fatty tissue?

      I think allergies are just junk getting where it shouldn’t, due to poor barrier function (which is itself due to prior toxins, damage, and/or deficiencies).

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  2. I have read that it is estimated that between 105-117 billion humans have ever lived on the planet. With all the terrible illnesses and diseases we are told that exist, how could over 100 billion people survived for some measure of time? And with the majority of them having lived in horrid, unsanitary and squalid conditions with no big pharma drugs to save them. What gives?

    Obviously, there are some mysterious internal bodily functions working to keep people alive. After all the research and investigation, in no way has medical science added anything that could replace that system, keep it functioning at a high level or improve upon it.

    The debate about antibodies, antigens and pathogens is a waste of time because most of these researchers seem to be working just to get the benefits of the grants they have received. In other words, if any real and honest scientific exploration and analysis was taking place, we would have some solid answers by now that could be trusted.

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    1. Absolutely. With the advent of vaccination, genomics, monoclonal antibodies, exosome therapy, chenotherapy, etc., there has been no improvement to our overall health nor our understanding of it. In fact, it has taken us further and further away from truly understanding health. People are convinced that they need pharmaceuticals, supplements, and injections to survive rather than clean food/water, exercise, sunlight, plenty of sleep, and management of stress.

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    2. Makes so much sense! It’s unbelievable how we’ve been taken for a ride all these years. I don’t think we can ever possibly know everything there is to know about the human body’s defense mechanism…

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  3. I write this as in invitation to ponder – not a proscription.
    The details of the modelling of life as biology become insanely complex because our minds are predicated to mask in obfuscation, prior to the rational development that then thinks to ‘make sense’ of the world as seems.
    While alignment in integrity of being is directly healing, the mind of judgement (including theoretical modelling) becomes a reverse template for the capacity to look at the mind instead of reacting from its masking filters.
    “Everything is BACKWARDS; everything is upside down! Doctors destroy health, Lawyers destroy justice, Universities destroy knowledge, Governments destroy freedom, Major media destroys information, And religions destroy spirituality”.
    ~Michael Ellner

    This is a result of minds set in a reversal of cause and effect. ‘Determined by symptoms assigned mythical causation’.

    Mind – as awareness of intention, value and desire, can generate postulates through which to structure or model fruits or results.
    Mind can identify in such a focus, to be-live the experience as a point of view given continuity & support, as an adaptive adjustment to and within self-conditioned results, operating as a consciousness relative to a projected body and world.
    But in all the above, an embracing context is discarded or excluded by the selective focus, that then presumes itself autonomous or self-existing in a specifically objected experience of the only reality that is.
    A persistent inertial fulcrum arising from an identified or protected pattern of imbalance as a sense of self set against otherness reflecting denial of a greater awareness.
    Context or Terrain is thus the true address and nature of what seems to be a self-reinforcing conflict from the objected or defined ‘self’.
    An objected or split sense of self is set by dividuation to seek wholeness externally as the driven sense of lack resulting from dissonance, disconnection, & struggle in fear of pain of loss. The intent to individualise is then a unique expression of life set in specific patterns of relational orientation as strategies of self-surviving within a relational expression of unrecognised or addressed wholeness – experienced as conflicted self-contradiction in motion.
    Defences hold the memory of their invocation or conflict as a worldview/identity or masking filter for conditioned perception-response, as a reiteration of conflicts projected but not truly addressed.
    The patterning of the body is not a result of body parts or pustules exercising creative
    autonomy as ‘minds of their own’, but alignment within nested fields of our own currently unfolding experience of core themes and definitions.

    Hamer’s ‘new medicine’ has relevance for a psycho-physical appreciation in place of a myth of physical determinism.

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  4. brian

    I hear almost everything that your saying, but a few ideas I don’t quite pin down because you write not just on an esoteric topic (great!) but also in an esoteric style (alignment), and sometimes that looks like bad grammar and spelling lol, but, please, don’t change a thing. 🙂

    I don’t agree with you regarding said ‘physical determinism,’ which is what we’re haggling over, here. But I’m open to being wrong in accordance with Reason which itself, we agree, is based on cause and effect in the ecology. (I just want to say generally how pleased I am that the Viroliegy commentariat seems to understand implicitly the animal nature of Reason. That really places us out onto rangeland.)

    I’ve not read much German New Medicine at all. Hardly any. So I have work to do. But here’s what the self-organizing of animism has shown me:

    The patterning of the body *is* the result of body parts exercising creative autonomy with minds of their own, and the terrain or context of the total ‘organism’ and, by extension, the organism’s mind (metaconsciousness) is nested *within* that collection of autonomous, minded creatures we call cells. From the collective, symbiotic cell culture consciousness that is the multi-cellular organism comes a meta- — comes a nested — consciousness. To the civilized metaconsciousness, great misunderstanding arises over its own nature. In truth, mind is indeed determined by ‘body’ which is the evolved collective of automous, single-celled creatures having first learned, long ago, to divide into two in order to become two-as-one, and then learned to decide to differentiate into another ’tissue type’ while dividing as a result of having reasoned that doing so would be to improved effect. That’s natural selection.

    We grew in life (evolved) from single-celled autonomous creatures. That is our foundation. Foundations are forever. We can call bacteria and fungi our oldest ancestors, and that would be true, but the deepest truth is that ‘we’ ourselves are just profoundly nested, evolutionary, symbiotic cultures of ‘our oldest ancestors.’ ‘We’ are hyperadapted cultures of single-celled organisms. Look at the mitochondrial endosymbionts in every one of our cells, nested within the differentiated eukaryotic cell body.

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    1. This is why there will never be an AI that can do what humans can. Aggregate organisms like us are far too complex to model, as simple as our behavior can seem at times.

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      1. Yeah there’s no such thing as artificial intelligence. It’s just another profit-driven parlor trick. It’s powerful but it’s not intelligent.

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      2. There is ‘machine thinking’ which is another term for the programming or perception-response based on use of the mind as defence against communication perceived as attack, rather than true or whole functional extension of and as communication.
        So we have an alloy of fear and love pervading our human conditioning, according to what is identified ‘self’ and what is ‘othered’. This very like to the so called immune system, in that memory associations trigger responses that reiterate the ‘attack’ at some level. Conditional love is ‘attacked’ by a change of conditions.
        This defence system runs all the time, always on alert as a subconscious setting for a stranger in a strange world, or a mask of kindness in a hostile or untrustworthy world – as mapped out from past experience – such as to be a walking database of learned impressions that thinks to already ‘know’ and pre-emptively react to a life locked into judgements that effectively run as masking code, both personally and socially.
        The ego runs in time, but not in timelessness. So there is the grace of an intimacy of being, where we forget or neglect to invoke or follow its dictate. Tjis opens the way to re-evaluate old choices , perceptions and meanings to better serve a whole sense of who we now accept ourselves to be, appreciate and share in. True presence aligns past and future as an expression of wholeness. Machine thinking is driven by and thus a product of its ‘past’ to resolve conflict as its future, to sacrifice presence for a fleeting present that neither abides or fulfils – hence restless, addictive and obsessive preoccupation of a ‘self’ that was or might be.

        AI extends the basic logical rules of comparison according to the defined and selected ‘values’, but value is a qualitative act of extension, recognised, received and shared in. The quantification of a qualitative life, is already a dissociation to a mind-mimicry in which masking in the manner of, substitutes for true intimacy of communication. Hence I also use ‘masking’ as a way to sketch out the ‘ego’ of an attempt to get, from a sense of self-lack, within what is already freely given but for the true alignment in kind. Attempt to grasp or possess life persist as a sense of being possessed by self-illusions that are like being phished for identity theft.

        The experience we open and explore as the human condition is rich. Regardless the filtering distortions and corruptions of a mask set over to look away from truth – as if to make it in our own image, ‘God is not mocked’ and the true of being is not lost so much as hidden by a mindset for-getting, that can as easily serve for-giving – as restored function, not as a doormat or moral ‘superiority set in conflict.

        I saw not too long ago the claim that ‘catching measles’ erased acquired immunities (in terms of ‘antibody theory). This is similar to where fever has been known to undo disease conditions such as cancer. I could use the term ‘reset’ for the reconnecting or reintegrating of an encapsuated conflict to the quality of light that is simple unadulterated presence, but we don’t have to reboot ego for yet another round, but have renewal from a new and now basis.
        So a willingness to release self-illusion to align in true serves a creative appreciation rather than responsive or reactive survival set in face or control. This is very different to learn.

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      3. brian your ‘machine thinking’ strikes me as a sort of ‘spiritual’ version of Ouspenky’s (or was it Gurdjieff?) writings on mechanical thinking. Thanks.

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    2. The idea of physical determinism discards infinity to focus an object as ‘thing-in-itself’.
      This perception reflects the notion of ‘self-in-itself’. The lens of ‘mind’ through which we ‘see’ determines the measure or evaluated meaning of the ‘seen’.
      The shift to such a focus as the splitting of Cause/Event to a linear causality of cause & effect as object-persistence is part of our learning to ‘see’ and adapt to our human world. Beneath or within our experience is a purely qualitative nature, that is in a sense given limited representation and reflection in tangible and visible experience OF what can never itself be objectified or defined.
      This can be called ‘separation trauma’ – by which a mind or minding of active focus seems to split from a whole to a pattern of persistence, as a boundaried condition – like an eddy in a river flow. A pinch-point within Infinity, resonates with all other pinch-points or vortices – each according to its kind.
      The physics of plasma dynamics as resonant charge domains – with properties of angular spin that effect instant or synchronous ‘communication’ is an expansion and fulfilment to the particle/impact & force based thermo-dynamic physics pertaining to an object-model of self and World. (Itself built upon a ‘face’ of pattern recognition in archetypal symbols that mutate and yet reiterate as core definition/beliefs of Self-Other in shifting and broken constellations).

      The argument between Mind and matter – or Matter and mind is an artefact of our thought.
      ‘Nocebo’ can sicken, weaken and kill without any material substance. Fear of miscreative or destructive thought actively invokes a ‘masking mind & reality’ of filtered and ruled containment to a representation of ‘externalised’ conflicts in distancing as time and space.

      We have enough of a resonance in sharing perspectives to look at not just what is or seems to be, but at how we (choose to) see it. While the belief in physical medications serves to protect from overwhelming fear (psychotic reaction), they are well advised as a temporary expedient.
      But healing is a reintegrative release of otherwise unrecognised conflict set into relational patterns or habits of mutual reinforcement. Awakening true responsibility is releasing a false ‘mind-control’ of attempt to control life – that attracts & aligns experience of ‘being controlled’.
      GIGO. Except we are likely to not accept our feedback as feedback to our own realm of responsibility, but as attack – that calls for response in like kind.
      ‘For every action is an equal and opposite reaction’ also points to a fulcrum or equilibrium representing the Field or Terrain of which such polarities express and embody in motion.
      The richness of expression is a living consciousness – or if you want – ecosystem, though my relationship is in Spirit – not in concept.
      I appreciate your interaction, as a cocreative endeavour within an already Creative that cannot be known but by resonant alignment in like kind. Any symbol or metaphor can be taken in vain.
      Phished by our own image & definitions to run off like a prodigal Eddy with a mis taken identity set by unnatural selection, given protection and support against disclosure.

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      1. brian do you think there may be an exceptional nocebo effect happening with the Covid vaxxxes given the circumstances?

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      2. In a sense yes, because the fears are compounded from different angles to focus in and through that idea.
        False ‘Solutions’ provide a new arena for unhealed fears or unresolved conflicts to reiterate in ways that mask as if new issues, threats or diseases.
        This would be complex to write on, but understanding how denied fear masks itself, to then attack its own projections is not required to align in integrity of being such that we release the susceptibility or suggestibility to negative patterns or habits of thought and behaviour that would undermine, dispirit or deny our capacity to live and share in living.

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  5. Mike, another great article.
    I comment frequently on substack and zerohedge and I’ve been sharing links to your site. There’s a minority of other people doing the same. But I see lots of pushback from most people. Some even think the virus skeptic movement is a PSYOP meant to discredit the anti-vaxxers. I think the opposite is true: viruses/vaccines are a PSYOP promoted by the globalists who also fund the scientists. Scientists really believe in what their funders want them to believe.

    There are lots of headlines now about monkey-pox- perhaps that could be a future post? In Cowan’s book, he mentions the possibility that smallpox was due to bed bug bites. That might explain why smallpox cases plunged as nutrition/sanitation/hygiene improved.

    Keep up the Great Work!

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    2. CK

      I love Tom. I refer to him as the Yoda of the Terrain. Linking smallpox to bedbugs strikes me as rather odd. Can you or anyone else flesh out that idea of Tom’s at all? Or flesh it out of your own accord?

      The ‘smallpox’ symptomology is very closely correlated with acute malnutrition and acute circumstantial trauma more generally. The skin is can act as a pressure release on the filter system. It can also be a distributed source of food during an intelligent catabolic collapse, with the pustules being local superfund sites of mass apoptotis.

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      1. Cowan cites Dr. Campbell’s theory of smallpox. This link below tries to debunk it.
        https://www.popsci.com/charles-campbell-smallpox-and-bed-bug/

        Cowan also mentions the theory that the Black Death was due to comets, not an infectious disease, which was proposed in “New Light on the Black Death” by Mike Baillie. According to this book, the Chinese are really talking about comets when they refer to “fire-breathing dragons”.

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      2. Those looking at plasma cosmology/electric universe find a commonality to the cosmic terrain -such as comets and other alignments as part of fluctuations in the electromagnetic flux in which an electric (relatively charged) Earth is nested. This not only embraces cosmic rays/particles and influx of ionic matters (space dust/waters) but also corresponding earth/telluric currents – that underlie quakes and volcanic actions – spewing nanoparticulates and modifying weather (famine). In more or intense charge events through our atmosphere (leaky capacitance) plasma shifts to glow mode – and in extreme discharge events to arc-mode – such as storms that literally ‘move mountains’. Plasma tech is industrially used to instantly coat, sort and layer various elements – and also associated with transmutation and petrification (Safire project). In a period of charge balance or equilibrium, such events no longer.
        Such events are species memory (Separation/activation trauma). The period for the stability of developing what we take to be consciousness is of an control set over feared chaos, such that ancient symbols operate below the conscious level.

        This is all to say there is every reason to consider the total terrain in terms of events such as Black Death – but also to observe the psychic-emotional charged reactions compound a toxic challenge/adaptation with reiterating themes from ancient apocalyptic fears. Along with opportunistic power grabs where check and balances are lost to ‘self-vindications’ set by grievance, envy and resentment.

        Our currently stable Solar System moves through domains of varying plasma charge density (not a vacuum). Everything does not revolve heliocentric in plan view and more than it revolves around an Earth perched on a Turtle. But what we don’t get now is that the Ancients mapped felt qualities of resonance to Powers with symbolic representations such as turtle shell, fish scale, horse or lion’s manes, serpents with petrifying gaze.
        Aboriginal Australians hold racial memory for where the Rainbow Serpent, rose out of the Earth and where it returned. Where do you think all the gold, diamonds and rare transmutations are found…
        In many ways, we already ‘live’ in a computer. Our reality simply reflects this back, The core programming is not being done to us, so much as something we do to ourselves via proxies – such as to attack ourself unwittingly under narratives that capture and compel the minds that are invested in them.

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      3. Smallpox pus is described as having a “sweetish pungent smell.” When I had “chicken pox” as a kid it smelled horribly medicine-like, sort of like benadryl perhaps. Perhaps I could say there were sickly sweet notes in there as well.

        That should give some clues as to what’s being detoxed from the body. This article has more observations about body odors and disease conditions. Has no one done an assay on the pus? Never??

        https://academic.oup.com/jb/article/150/3/257/867730

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      4. Thanks CK, read that. Yeah still seems odd. It would be so easy to definitively link bedbugs with smallpox if it was the case. Back when we were city people my wife was a caseworker and bedbugs were common and bedbug checks were standard.

        The theory on cometary pollution causing the plague, given the tree ring and ice core data, makes sense. The tree rings are going to be small here in western Oregon this year. Trees are still leafing out, the walnuts and oaks only just getting started.

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      6. I read that bedbugs were so bad for English gentlemen taking their Tour of Europe – i(n the days where the Alps had to be climbed), took a piglet as a sacrificial feast to satiate the mites.
        I don’t align in the bedmite theory – but a cursory search shows symptoms ranging from itch to allergy and anaphalactic shock.
        Malnutrition is also a poverty of spirit – set in misery rather than recognition.
        Call it morale if you want, but the breakdown of the psyche reflects in the body directly and as a result of conditioned despair.
        The kinds of environmental challenge or exposures to poisons and shocks were in many ways a different world. But regardless the names or ‘solutions’ assigned, it looks like a breakdown of psychic-emotional and physical boundary conditions is both triggering conflict shocks (Hamer) and exposure to new ones – such as make a long list!

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      8. The EM terrain is part of the ‘particle’ equation 😉
        Volcano is evocative of pent up rage.
        Reality breaks when the ‘earth shakes’.
        The whole thing is also a feedback loop – not just a physical set of challenges.
        That particles can be generated by filed interactions and modified by field interactions is particularly interesting to my field of research, or the field of desire & intention that guides an appreciation for seek+find.

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  6. Mike, this is really mind-boggling. The more we look at the entire antibody theory and virology in general, the less it seems at all like a science, more like a bunch of conjectures and guesses which have been welded into place via assertions backed by lots of government, corporate and corporate foundation funding provided because the message was one that they wanted to hear. Time for people, including most of the ones with science backgrounds, to wake up out of this trance-enforced confidence game.

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    1. Bingo! These “theories” are nothing but hypotheses disguised as theories. It seems that the equation is: speculation + assumption + guesswork = theory.

      It amazes me that any of this is accepted as “truth.” It is all pseudoscience.

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      1. And so many in the “resistance” seem so afraid to admit the emperor’s nakedness, as if it’s too much to handle on top of everything else. Their favorite excuse? “It’s a distraction.”

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      2. Though I appreciate my posts may seem ‘dense’ a key theme is that the masking mind is serving a function relative to a current belief or accepted ‘reality’. If clinging to a lie is the only way to ‘survive’ within an active terror – guess what happens?
        That we are framed in a complex masking of beliefs is not at all obvious to a surface appearance. But for many now the revealing of complex devices of coercive or seductive deceits as a web of lies underneath the ‘world we thought we knew’ is a crash course in re-establishing sanity – within or despite the experience of an insane world.

        There is a lot of scope for triggering further conflict in an already conflicted situation, as if THIS time we must act now or it will be too late!!! In other words react first and divert our own sense of conflict away from us as a (temporary) escape under Notional Security Dictate.

        The fear thing runs a lot deeper than masking rationalisations might suggest. Many are thrown when reasoned empirical facts cannot reach others who are more than able to understand but will not. So we are learning more of what runs beneath – as well as undoing destructive dogma that ran in our own minds as if fact.
        The other thing is that revealing the lie & the father of it, opens to the innocence of curiosity and wonder in uncovering the desire to ask and find what, then Is recognisably true?

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      3. I read this interview of Mike Yeadon https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/mike-yeadon-has-been-proved-right-we-have-been-lied-to/ and i quote below a part of it concerning “no-vitus”people. You must admit that he has a point.

        “The no-virus people sometimes get on my case . . . But when I strike back and say, ‘I’ll accept there’s no viruses as long as you will provide me with an alternative means to explain transmission.’ The common experience is that people do catch colds from each other. So if you’re telling me it’s purely, what do they call it? Terrain. Like depression or bad nutrition. So how come then a fit, well and cheerful person can visit a friend with a cold and then get a cold? . . . So if you don’t call it viruses and you say it’s not this little sphere that’s an exosome, that’s fine, you know? But I think there’s a transmissible agent and I think that’s people’s common experience.

        Furthermore, at an immunological level, you can detect antibodies to, and T-cells, that respond to bits of things that we call viruses. So even if they’re not it, there’s what I call this molecular fingerprint (that) is left after an infection. “

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      4. Not really. One does not need an alternative explanation to criticize the current paradigm. We ask for direct proof of “viruses.” It should be easy for them to provide this to us. However, they have failed over and over and over again. Yeadon provided indirect explanations yet again. People getting sick together at the same time does not equal “virus.” This can be caused by many environmental factors. There are just as many instances where people are around others who are sick and yet they remain completely healthy. There is also no direct proof of exosomes nor of any transmissible agent.

        Antibodies are just as fictional as “viruses” and exosomes. Just because they can get a chemical reaction at times with substances assumed to contain antibodies does not prove a “virus.” There are numerous issues with antibodies. Like “viruses,” they existed as an idea first rather than something observed in nature. They have never been purified/isolated. The different theories explaining their shape, form, and function are hypotheses disguised as theories. “Antibody” reactions are not specific and regularly cross-react as the antibodies are claimed to bind to other unintended targets. Most of the antibody results can not be reproduced and/or replicated.

        In other words, Yeadon can not use results purporting to come from one fictional entity to claim as proof for the existence of another fictional entity. His logic is flawed.

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      5. I like Dr. Mike Yeadon because he has integrity and he was one of the first to point out the depopulation agenda. I actually agree with him to some extent. My response would be it’s ok to assume without proof that infectious viruses exist as long as we also admit the virus tests are 100% invalid, the virus genomes are FAKE and all vaccines are worthless.

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      6. We could assume anything exists without proof then. We can assume Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, unicorns, gnomes, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, etc. all exist. We can do that for any fictional creation. However, why should we? The foundational evidence does not exist. Like the fictional entities I just listed, “viruses,” antibodies, exosomes, DNA, etc. existed as ideas first. They are imaginary creations. It is OK to believe they exist but what is the point? Someone in Yeadon’s position could do a lot of good by calling out the lack of direct evidence for these fictional creations yet he has done no such thing. That is a problem to me.

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      7. A vested identity in call to a war, takes priority over a due process of re prioritisation.
        The self-hacking mind…
        Mythic or narrative imaginations are part of our own creative toolset for mapping out an internal model that is part of cultural construct.
        Our liability and perhaps way out, is that we project repressed self-conflicts onto our relational experience. Those unready or unwilling to own such conflict WANT to see such ‘evidences’ or are compelled to – by such conflicts.
        I agree that the recognition of reality undoes such a complex, but within a terrain of willingness.
        I note that many who challenge germ theory can prematurely assert their new opinions in ways that are still polarised and thus polarising. As if its about being right rather than uncovering a truth that shares correction of errors that are grievous or destructive and self-reinforcing.
        So the need to bring attention present rather than react to our modelling, is an ongoing discipline. I am not disagreeing with your point. Anyone whose life is trained within an established order is more vested in its structures of thought as ‘the way the world works’.
        But its the way the mind of a collective agreement worked.
        Releasing the pathogenesis of human thought can be caught in pathologising those who as yet wittingly or otherwise obstruct the revealing of a false to the freedom to uncover the true.
        Boundary conditions hold information.

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      8. It is definitely a fine line trying to present information for people to make their own conclusions but also supplying my own interpretation/conclusions. My goal is definitely not to have anyone take what I write as the whole truth. I want them to use the information as a springboard to find out the truth for themselves. My journey continues as I am still learning myself. What I believe today could change tomorrow based on the evidence or lack thereof. I used to believe in “viruses,” antibodies, exosomes, DNA/RNA, etc. My opinion has completely changed based on what I have researched/uncovered. My goal is to get people not to just accept the evidence presented but to trace everything back to the original source and see if it holds up to the scientific method, to scrutiny, to critical thought, and to logic. We must all become our own experts rather than relying on those who are placed into those positions. In the process, we can learn and grow through each other.

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      9. Yes, I agree. I think that if presenting as science, it needs be scientific. That is, transparent and accountable in its methods, terms, procedures, and measures taken to test for errors or false results & etc.
        For reasons we know, this is often far from the case, and even diligent work can be resting on the shoulders of giant mistakes, false assumptions or fraud.
        i come from a different perspective but I appreciate yours, and agree that a shared purpose is more than the sum of its parts – though you didn’t put it that way.

        A few times when reading through the minutiae of your accounts of what is thought to happen, I wonder what can definitely be said to happen – without recourse to specialised training & procedures that generate artefacts or in vitro results without transfer value to life.

        If the concept of an immune system hadnt been taken up, (from mithraditism and vaccination theory) how would life function be described? Or indeed how would be experience it directly if not fitted to a model of defences under attack?

        This is an invitation to ponder, not waiting on an answer 😉

        My sense is there are deeper reasons as for why science (as funded) wants models that define in terms of control – even if the ‘controls’ turn out to compound disease and disorder (as I see they do).

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  7. Mike, as I believe I’ve said before here (could be wrong), the Spiegelman’s Monster experiments are direct proof of transmission, however it is that any one of us chooses to characterize the dynamic. These experiments would be the ones that Tom refers to when he references the self-organizing/patterning abilities of free nucleic acids, in service of ‘his’ exosome-free, ‘conscious resonance’ alternative to contagion.

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      1. The free nucleic acids in the one beaker assembled into the exact same configuration as the genetic sequence in the other beaker.

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    2. Has the experiment been reproduced? Otherwise it could just be a made-up story. And, genomics. Cowan may reference it, but while Cowan is great on many things he’s iffy on quite a few things as well. There’s no rule that all of us have to agree with everything one of the headline “virus” skeptics says.

      Are we going to argue that quantum entanglement is proof of communication between entities and therefore of contagion? Quantum entanglement is of course just another lousy parlor trick ( https://youtu.be/yOtsEgbg1-s ).

      One need not look far for a mechanism of communication among humans anyway, as we there are pheromones and other olfactory and visual appearances that demonstrably affect us and help coordinate our action in quite a powerful and unmistakable way, yawning being the most familiar example.

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      1. All great points. Yes, Cowan has many good ideas but he’s not necessarily right either. Cowan borrows from Firstenberg’s “Invisible Rainbow” book and blames the 1918 Spanish Flu on the introduction of global radio (EMF). A more likely explanation is WWI vaccines and “treatment” with high doses of aspirin.
        https://naturalnews.com/2021-12-29-only-vaccinated-died-1918-spanish-flu.html#

        For most people, disproving virology isn’t enough- they want a replacement paradigm as well.

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      2. Yeah I suspect EMFs are bad but I think illness in general isn’t something that pounces on people randomly, only seems that way because they miss the little daily signs, and in my case a lot of personal experimentation puts diet, sleep, sunlight, stress, and even posture way ahead of EMF exposure for my daily quality of life and my tendency toward illness (specifically flu-like illness seems mostly to do with diet, sunlight, and – if applicable – stress). I can eat desserts for a few days and feel the very early signs of a cold just barely coming into view, so I stop. No colds for a decade. No sick days for a decade. It’s very easy for me to control now, just return to more natural living.

        The paradigm of diseases as “toxins/stress and detox/repair” I think would be fairly straightforward to grasp and very convincing if we lived more natural lives and were in a culture that practiced therapeutic fasting, because in a long fast the very goal is to “get sick” and feel various aches and pains, pass painful stools, etc. When each of these results in a noticeable improvement that correlates comprehensibly with the type of symptoms that happened, it becomes very easy to see what illness is, why it is beneficial, why microbes aren’t the cause, and probably why some types of illness seem to transmit (even after accounting for common toxin exposure), i.e., because a pox is an invitation to do the same type of detox. These invitations and timing coordination moves make great sense if the incentives on each person’s body are thought through in a nomadic tribal past.

        When it’s understood that the body is highly intelligent, it’s not too hard to figure out plausible reasons why it does what it does without having any temptation to resort to germ theory voodoo. The strong version of germ theory came about only after millennia of progressive removal from natural living had built up to such a degree that humans could no longer tell which way was up. Stopping all caloric intake for days/weeks quickly brings it all back into focus.

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      3. Firstenberg has a lot of very interesting historical research but all gathered to establish the EM pollution thesis as THE next thing. Reminds me of Silent Spring which wittingly or otherwise catalyzed the environmental movement that was cultured to run the carbon guilt agenda.

        My sense is the EM – along with plasma physic/dynamic is a breaking or emerging perspective of expansion, that vested interests perceive as threat, not least because their research is dedicated to marketising and weaponising everything. So we often learn by burning or hurting ourself first – if we survive or are not traumatized.

        An invisible realm of vibrational energy and information already is the nature of the light, as of ‘the waters’ above and below. Prison Planet can be viewed as kindergarten.
        Firstenberg’s repetitive fear-warning assertions are a significant caveat to the research referenced. Cowan has relaxed that focus to merely include it rather than ride its horse into battle.

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      4. Yeah the experiment is a canonical one in evolutionary molecular biology, and others have also put twists on the experiment, like adding RNA replicase inhibitors which caused the consciousness of the replicase to come up with workarounds (mutate), and in another they didn’t even put free nucleic acids (nucleotides) in the test tube, they just put nucleobases in, and they formed nucleotides before assembling into RNA.

        I recalled the details poorly, which I did in accordance with Tom’s sorta understandable (this is debatable) loose and abridged referencing of the experiments which he’s done on numerous videos and podcasts that I’ve seen or heard, and I’ve probably only consumed about 15 or 20 Cowan and Co. broadcasts. So most here should know what I’m talking about. Tom talks about two beakers or tubes — one with RNA and one with nucleotides — and I don’t think he even mentions the replicase, which is purportedly the enzymatic part of the RNA genome that acts as the catalyst for it’s replication. Actually there’s only one beaker effectively involved and the dynamic has nothing to do with non-locality: RNA, the same RNA’s replicase part of its genome, free nucleic acids (nucleotides), water, and salts are put in the beaker, light is shone, and more of the same RNAs are created; then an RNA is moved to a new beaker and repeated, and it happens over and over again, but the RNAs get adaptively shorter to a point (island effect?). Then another lab, with more difficulty, was able to *just* use the replicase without the full RNAs present, to assemble the nucleotides into the RNA.

        I’m guessing, due to Tom’s narration, that he thinks ‘conscious resonance’ must have something to do with non-locality; in a sense he’s right, of course, because the replicase, which is a piece of the RNA genome, has within it a whole, ‘non-local'(resonant consciousness) template of the full RNA and the two therefore share the same ontological fractal. But this has nothing to do with quantum entanglement theory which I know nothing about and am strongly inclined to take your word for it, Clarifire, if you say it’s an incorrect theory. At first blush my instincts certainly doubt it because growth — growing in life — happens from the inside-out and on location; in situ; a continuum. Entanglement suggests to me dislocation on the most fundamental level.

        We’re talking about genesis here, with these proteomic experiments. Living molecular evolution in the time before cells. Chemical-elemental consciousness. Biogenesis. The primordial ‘chemical’ soup. What brian mentioned the other day. Before single-celled organisms there were invariably proto-cellular conditions that ‘encapsulated’ conditions favorable to creative body formation, and all of these encapsulations involved water-based formations.

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      5. I’m not othering Tom here nor masking a superiority — we’re all just vehicles for the truth here, and I’m as fair game as anybody — but the great irony I see in Tom using these experiments as his acknowledgement of a ‘collective unconsciousness’ that resonates across all lifeforms, and that explicitly excludes proteomics and, specifically, exosomes, is that these RNAs being used *are* exosomes lol. The scientists call them viruses but that’s just their cultural hang-up. And lo, if ones sees the Reason in seeing exosomes as the particle-based drivers of evolution, then one sees further than us as hyperadapted cultures of single-celled organisms. Looking at life from the inside — of cell division — one sees us as a hyperadapted primordial soup: DNA transcribes (simplifies/’devolves’) into RNA and then to mRNA (an exosome without the packaging) acting under the conditions analogous to those that were so difficult for Spiegelman’s successors to reproduce, so that it can originate the nuclear mitosis by genesis, of the nucleobases that have gathered together.

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    3. WordPress isn’t letting me reply to your deeper-nested comments, but the experiment sounds interesting and I’ll have to look at it more after brushing up on my understanding of what DNA/RNA actually are. The realm of intercellular communication (if indeed cells are even a thing) seems ripe for exploration and I’m far from being able to comment much on it yet.

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      1. Right on. I find it stimulating. I know Daniel does, too. The line of thought started for me with Zach Bush’s virome presentation. He uses the word virus instead of exosome as a convenience. He’s kind of a crossover figure. You probably know who he is. He and Tom seem to tiptoe around each other with professional respect instead of opting for the steel cage match but I did notice that Zach wrote the foreword to Tom’s latest book on water.

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  8. I agree with CK for Mike Yeadon as for the virus assumption I’m really confused.Reading all your posts and watching the videos with Kauffman and others I come to the conclusion that the virology speculate with chemical reactions and nucleotide acids.

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    1. Yes, virology is nothing but pure speculation, assumption, and guesswork based on chemical reactions in a lab. Nothing is observed in nature and it does not follow the scientific method. It is therefore not science but pseudoscience.

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    1. We’re not talking ‘material’ transmission here. We’re just talking transmission, which is another word for communication. Pattern transfer.

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      2. Your question is a strawman, Jeffrey. Reason-based animism holds that *any* holographic body holding space in the universe — ‘living’ organism or elemental/mineral body — is a symbiotic body of energy and that which animates energy. That which animates energy is in Reason obviously a patterned transmission or there is no body.

        As I recall, a piece of the genetic sequence was transferred to the other beaker with the free nucleic acids, light was shined on both beakers, and the free acids assembled with the piece to form the same genetic sequence. Whoever does not believe in this degree of genomics can disregard these experiments altogether, but the implicit appeal to authority in my bringing up the experiments is that Tom Cowan uses them as his prime (only?) example for explaining the non-germ transmission dynamic for instances that can’t be explained by “shit in the water.”

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      3. If you tune in to BBC transmission you receive its payload of social engineering running to mind control. In the same way we are all vibrational receivers according to our thought, such as to always be in a ‘psychic’ or subtle field of communication – regardless the general belief that the mind in the brain or in the brain, and thus distanced from others as a privately masked and defended boundary against psychic contagions of discarded or denied self. Set in avoidance of exposure to loss of face or loss of control. Limiting and splitting off is in a sense a ‘mind-virus’ by which to mutually reinforce Self Ignorance in exchange for a proprietary sense of control within an inherent conflict or dissonance.
        The idea of contagion goes back to (and still runs as) superstition or fears masked by magical protections. If we give our power to a magical protection, it leaves delivers fear of ‘powerlessness’ when that defence is taken away (or breaks down to novel threats). So the cult of sacrifice will ratchet layers over layers of masking defence against exposure to the original conflict or fear, until we are ‘saved’ by death from facing & owning what we have made of life.
        The true nature of communication is an intimacy of being.
        We developed ‘communication’ to mask in and manipulate or attack with.
        The patterns underlying ‘pathogenic virus’ are archetypal conditioning that wont be addressed or released superficially, yet the themes are recognisable to our own ‘mindsets’.

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      3. It’s both a natural phenomenon and a lab experiment. If it works in the lab then some analog(s) of it works in nature, because the lab exists in nature in order to engineer nature. Like Alan Watts said, “some things are more natural than others.”

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      4. It is not observed in nature. If it is dealing with RNA, it is a lab created effect that can not be observed with the naked eye. Just because something works in a lab does not mean it works in the body In the same manner. These substances are taken out of the natural environment and subjected to stimulus that they would not be subjected to within a living organism.

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      5. The human intent can create proprietary conditions to induce a desired outcome, without such a set up, the natural result would no longer support the private agenda. The line between nature and nurture may seem blurred because we create masking models of self, world and externally code driven automata for the purpose of hacking.
        The idea of science as the revealing of the already true, to a growing capacity to recognise, appreciate, integrate and grow, is lost in its own ‘making’ or magical constructs given power of priority.
        Something of a cause-effect relationship may be revealed in vitro that may have some application in vivo – but I see the blind watchmaker seeking to reverse engineer life in terms of sacrificing the living to fit or fulfil the invested model, ideal, image or pet theory set to self-agrandisement. We all have personal bias that must become conscious as part of the framing selections and parameters by which we presume to know…

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      6. “The human intent can create proprietary conditions to induce a desired outcome, without such a set up, the natural result would no longer support the private agenda.”

        The Farmer’s intent.

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      7. These substances (lifeforms) exist outside of the body, too, Mike. That’s technically in vivo, too. Don’t you see? If they are lifeforms at all — and the animist knows that all non-metabolic ‘things’ are equally energy animated by living consciousness — then they are in vivo. Life doesn’t stop at our skin. These substances existed outside of the body before the body existed in the first place. The body grew out of these substances such that an inside could exist. The outside came first.

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      9. No, not in their natural environs. But then again who among us has seen a human in his natural environs? Yet we have poked prodded and classified him anyhow, by grade school compare and contrast. Hairless ape.

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      10. If RNA can not be observed in a natural state, how can one know it exists as has been sold? How is it not a creation of lab experimentation? To me, RNA seems to be yet another theoretical concept used to explain certain chemical reactions.

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      11. Well sure. And RNAs are strands of chemical compounds. In the object modeling of chemical reactions there has to be a diversity of chemical compounds interacting with each other in order to manifest the chemical reactions.

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      12. Yes, but to claim these things are natural and exist and function as described is where problems occur. They are lab-created concoctions that can not be observed naturally. It requires man-made chemicals, tests, and computer algorithms in order to “see” them. I have not looked into DNA/RNA as much as I would like but from others who have, the origin and existence of the assumed compounds are very questionable. Anything that is claimed to exist within the invisible realm of the micro level is highly questionable.

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      13. They use RNA and DNA from organisms. It looks like they made some synthetic nucleotides about ten years ago that can do some stuff. Apparently you can chemically extract DNA quite simply from food in the kitchen with common household items.
        The strands are so long that they bundle up and are easily seen with the naked eye.

        Seems to me you could extract some DNA from a few things at home and send them in. If they identify them correctly you have your answer. Or if you have friends of different races or whatever you guys can send samples in for identification. Like flat earther friends simultaneously photographing the moon and stars from considerably different locations to see once and for all if celestial parallax exists or not.

        Seems to me there are pretty darn direct ways of knowing for sure if you believe in mathematical odds.

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      14. There are actually numerous instances out there of DNA results being inaccurate.

        This person got different results from 3 different companies:

        https://www.livescience.com/63997-dna-ancestry-test-results-explained.html

        This person said results from 5 companies varied widely:

        https://www.sciencenews.org/article/consumer-genetic-testing-dna-genome

        This article discusses different results from 2 different companies:

        https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/dna-kits-yield-different-results-from-different-genetics-companies/125109/

        This woman also had varying results:

        https://hannahsivak.com/forum/?p=post%2Fon-dna-tests-as-illness-predictors-from-the-nyt-6689258

        This article explores the accuracy of DNA tests:

        “What can DNA tests really tell us?

        Although the tests are not as accurate as many suppose, they can still give some hints about our more general heritage. Even so, a broader question remains: Why does it matter?”

        https://www.freep.com/story/life/2018/10/05/dna-testing-accuracy/1517018002/

        This source goes into the inaccuracy of DNA used in criminal cases:

        “Many jurors are under the impression that DNA matches are often irrefutable, and will often use those results to return a conviction for a crime. However, recent research has demonstrated that DNA may not be as reliable as once thought, especially in jurisdictions that have a backlog of DNA testing to complete.”

        https://www.criminal-defense-attorney.info/blog/dna-testing-may-not-always-be-accurate-in-criminal-investigations/

        This article goes in depth on the inaccuracy of forensic DNA:

        THE FALSE PROMISE OF DNA TESTING

        “Acting on a tip from a whistle-blower, KHOU 11 had obtained dozens of DNA profiles processed by the lab and sent them to independent experts for analysis. The results, William Thompson, an attorney and a criminology professor at the University of California at Irvine, told a KHOU 11 reporter, were terrifying: It appeared that Houston police technicians were routinely misinterpreting even the most basic samples.”

        https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/a-reasonable-doubt/480747/

        We assume these tests are accurate but the evidence consistently show otherwise.

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      15. I’m open to being wrong but the bit about sending them to independent experts suggests that not all genetic testing is created equal. Not surprising in a deregulated capitalist country.

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      16. Here is another one about identical twins:

        “Identical twins have virtually identical DNA. So you’d think if a set of twins both sent in a DNA sample for genetic ancestry testing, they’d get the exact same results, right?

        Not necessarily, according to a recent investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In fact, the journalists demonstrated that twins don’t often get the same results from a single company. And across the industry, estimates of where an individual’s ancestors lived can differ significantly from company to company.

        In one instance, the consumer genetics company 23andMe told one twin she was 13 percent “Broadly European.” The other twin’s test, meanwhile, showed she had just 3 percent “Broadly European” ancestry, and had more DNA matched to other, more specific regions in Europe. What’s more, when the twins had their DNA tested by five companies, each one gave them different results.”

        https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/science-and-health/2019/1/28/18194560/ancestry-dna-23-me-myheritage-science-explainer

        The problem is that there is seemingly no standardization of the tests and they use different algorithms and different databases to obtain results. It is pretty much a guessing game using stored references. Who determined the reference sequences accurate? If DNA worked as sold, the tests should be accurate and companies should be obtaining the same results, not widely differing ones. This is why it is so important to look back at the foundational claims. We take it forgranted that these ideas and concepts have been perfectly vetted and that the testing is as accurate as claimed. However, upon digging beneath the surface, this never seems to be the case.

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      17. A boundary condition ‘creates’ an inside and outside.
        Without which there is neither, but not ‘nothing’ so much as Everything without differentiation, boundary or dimension. Infinity has no gap to take in, or project out.
        Finity seems to be In and Of All as if set apart. Such a wonder to behold that anything & everything is! You call this ‘the outside’, as part of a position by which to think, look and experience yourself & world.
        The balancing of the inner and outer or homeostasis, has a centric but not fixed fulcrum of tensegrity (integral confluence of the field of tensions.
        One of the underlying invisible fields of ordering matter as information is vibration, frequency, resonances and ‘wave interference’ such as cymatics can demonstrate for sound.
        Such domains are not as objected as thought can make them seem. At the nano level, structured charge domains in water ‘exist’ periodically. These interact with particles and proteins as phase changes at rates so fast as to fluctuate energy exchange without loss at millions or billions of times per second.
        Stroboscopes can filter seeing’ such as to show spin as static or wheels moving backwards to the fact. I mention all this to sketch the limitations of our modelling thought.
        Yet you are aware of thought and can select or accept thoughts as resonant and relevant to who you are in terms of experiencing yourself to be. Your world is then feedback and stimulus to the developing consciousness of relational exchange. Much of what we think we think is stepped down or filtered from synchronicities that have no respect for time or space or persons! But yet we are in nested embrace of inheritance, dependency and function to a wholeness that far exceeds our ‘thinking’ – yet is our capacity to think and share an exchange of meaning (as a mutually creative act of intention and desire given form).

        There are very many ‘good’ comments into these ‘pages’. In that I resonate with the qualities that are revealed. True desire aligns coherent experience.

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  10. Pingback: The Clonal Selection Antibody Theory (1957) – ViroLIEgy

  11. The companies like 23andme that are catering to the mass market consumer are using coarse, cheap genotyping techniques. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) is the gold standard. When there is plentiful, intact material to work with, it is supposed to be extremely reliable. There’s a new microscope technology out called TERS that uses a laser and an atomic microscope that can directly read RNA but not (yet?) DNA.

    Regarding forensics, yes, it has been a notoriously problematic tool in the field of criminal justice. Low quantity and quality samples, improper testing, jurors and lawyers none the wiser.

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    1. I think it’s a mistake to assume that WGS is more accurate. Genomes have been called “works in progress” and it is admitted that the technology is in a constant state of needing improvement. Even the human genome has gone through nearly 40 revisions over the last 20 years as it was continually upgraded. Accuracy would be subjective as genomes are just representations/models of something entirely unobservable to begin with. What is a genome? Where was a genome observed in nature? How was the accuracy of the first genome validated and what was it compared with to determine accuracy?

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  12. I don’t see that it’s a mistake to say that WGS is more accurate than genotyping. Two relevant, brief videos:

    The first ‘recorded’ genome, if it’s still used as a reference genome, gets validated relative to subsequent recordings.

    To say that genomes are entirely unobservable implies that you don’t actually believe in chemical reactions as you implied you did.

    Mike, how can they consistently tell the difference between subsaharan DNA and Nordic DNA, or between apple DNA and orange DNA if there is no there there? The fact that you are making your case that genomics is fraudulent fiction by evidencing, among other similar cases, that genotyping identical twins yields to slightly different haplotypings or whatever is not to argue that gene sequencing is pure fiction but that it’s inconsistent or immature, which is a self-defeating strategy.

    Look, I’m a ‘luddite’ myself and think genomics is asinine too. It takes navel-gazing to a new level. And, naturally, it gets weaponized.

    Indoor elites have taken the utility of metaconsciousness and used it to turn out a mind Matrix resembling horror movie hall of mirrors, for control purposes. If you simultaneously stress a sheep and change up the fencing on it, it will not be able to see a wide open gate right in front of its nose, through which to escape, if there is a fence line within 50yards of the farside of the gate that runs roughly parallel to it.

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    1. “The first ‘recorded’ genome, if it’s still used as a reference genome, gets validated relative to subsequent recordings.”

      Correct me if I am wrong, but are you stating that the first genome is validated by future genomes built from the first genome? In other words, the reference genome is used to validate itself. If this is what you are saying, that is circular reasoning.

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  13. I am indeed saying that but that doesn’t make it a ‘circular reasoning’ fallacy if one recognizes that the first genome was a legitimate-enough experimental result of 4billion years or whatever of Life observing cause and effect in the local ecology and responding to those observations. It makes it cyclical reasoning.bThe circular reasoning fallacy depends on a false first reasoning of any given cause and effect dynamic. When they sequenced the first genome it’s not like they had a little girl in a tutu paint a picture of a unicorn and subsequently claimed that unicorns exist in reality. They worked their asses off for it, and their methodology was consistent. That’s not the case with viruses, which was a purely psychocultural anti-unicorn that they claimed existed in reality; but even then that psychotic meme didn’t come out of the blue. It was simply the crooked culmination of thousands of years of eugenicist warring with and subjugation of the ecology. The Farmers’ insanely powerful object modelings were finally confronted with that which they couldn’t defeat, which was the evolutionary process itself which was their reason for being in the first place. The Plantation Farmers had been playing god for so long that they came to believe that they should get to run epigenetic evolution that is HGT because their intensive culling and breeding programs controlled actions but they didn’t control thoughts within the actions. Full spectrum dominance requires thought policing. Virology represents the thought policing of evolution, of bodily intelligence.

    Civilization, however objectionable a cultural paradigm it may be (most objectionable!), held the space for blessed hordes of ne’er-do-well humans to leave their bodies just to live in their minds as James Taylor put it – and begin the incessant poking and prodding. Which is why we’re farting around doing that ourselves. But, still, we, as transitional peoples entering a cyclical genetic bottleneck of possibly unprecedented amplitude, are doing it for the right reason. The reason being Reason itself. Getting back to the fundamentals. Patterning ourselves again on wild reality because wild reality is almost everything that is going to be coming out of the farside of this here civilizationally-caused bottleneck. We as mature adults are doing this as disparate elders of future cultures that will know nothing of each other. It’s important work. We’re keepers of the flame.

    The ‘discovery’ process — of genomes and other things — is an act of co-creation. Life itself is exactly the circular reasoning you are highlighting. The original cellular genesis of the primordial protein soup is ongoing wherever water can harbor it whether it be during the mitosis inside us or in, say, the oceans. That never ended. Foundations are ‘forever’ because reason is circular insofar as cause and effect observations are cyclical. Life and individual lives, both, evolve in spiraling, inside-out cycles; which can be object modeled as a toroidal dynamic. Perhaps, brian, you might relate that to plasma cosmology.

    https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA527622127&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=10905251&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=oregon_oweb&isGeoAuthType=true

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    1. You are assuming quite a bit again. Where is the validation for this statement?

      “When they sequenced the first genome it’s not like they had a little girl in a tutu paint a picture of a unicorn and subsequently claimed that unicorns exist in reality. They worked their asses off for it, and their methodology was consistent.”

      Where was the methodology shown consistent, reproducible, and replicable? How was the first genome conceived of? It is not a thing that can be observed. It is a human construct. A model. An idea. A representation. A work in progress.

      You are assuming a thing called a genome exists. There are no genomes outside of computer constructs.

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      1. I was referring to the fields of chemistry and biochemistry. You rarely mention beliefs you do hold but you did recently mention chemical reactions. Trying to meet you halfway here, brother.

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      2. I see. I’m searching for the validation for all of these claims. That requires going back to the very original sources/papers for DNA/RNA, genomes, etc. I have not been able to do a deep dive into all of that yet but some friends of mine have and from what I saw of what they uncovered, the foundational evidence is extremely questionable. I see genomics, immunology, virology, etc. as ways to try and explain the unexplainable and the unobservable. They do not come from a place of natural observation. They do not have valid independent variables in their experiments. They do not adhere to the scientific method. The data comes from creating unnatural chemical reactions in a lab with substances which would never be combined in nature and creating fictional accounts for what is going on within these reactions. They are all pseudosciences.

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      3. Right on. I also believe genomics, immunology, and virology are trying to explain the unexplainable. But genomics as an *open source* object modeling is the only one of the three that doesn’t violate the fundamentals of natural law as established by Reason.

        I respect your minimalism. Minimalism is the future. Who needs the number 4 when many will do?

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      4. Just because genomics modeling makes sense due to natural law and reason does not make it an accurate representation of reality. Things can work in a model but not have any relevance to the real world. This is why it is important to validate the claims made and scrutinize if the evidence has adhered to the scientific method.

        “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.”

        — George E. P. Box

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    1. I never said these crops do not exist. You are assuming, however, that the seeds have been genetically altered in some way in order to be resistant to Round-Up. However, is there proof this is the case? Could it be that they simply are habituating the seeds to poison? There are many weeds that become resistant to herbicides. Are they genetically modified as well or did the weeds adapt to the poison?

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      1. Commodity crops are hyperbred for one thing and one thing only, and that is maximum yield. ‘Weeds’ are called weeds because they are pioneer species evolved to recondition catastrophically disturbed soils, whether by poisoning, mechanical disturbance, climatological disturbance, etc. Even though they are both annuals, weeds and ultrabred grain and pulse commodity crops are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to toughness and adaptability. Breeding for insane yields comes at great adaptive cost. Besides, where is the evidence that Roundup Ready crops were intensively bred for both yield and poison resistance as opposed to genetically modified?

        And what about Bt corn? How did they breed it for pest resistance?

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      2. Where is the evidence Roundup Ready crops are genetically modified rather than bred for poison resistance? BT crops may appear pest resistant due to the amount of pesticides sprayed on them or if they are grown in BT soil. Have you looked at the original studies involving the creation of Roundup Ready and BT crops to verify the science or are you assuming they are genetically modified because we have been told that they are?

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      3. I have concluded that they’ve been modified because it fits with patterned intelligence. That’s living under natural law. You’ve concluded otherwise by not caring about the nonexistence of evidence in support of your breeding theory, which runs contrary to the whole point of you starting this blog.

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      4. No, you have made a conclusion without verifying if the claims made are accurate or not. You have never looked at the scientific evidence regarding this topic. I have not either but you asked me about these types of crops and I provided a possible alternative other than genetic modification. I am not claiming what I suggested has occurred. However, just as weeds can grow resistant to toxins over time, it is a possibility that crops can do the same rather than through genetic modification. I have not looked into this enough to form an opinion one way or the other. There is enough smoke involving the validity of DNA/RNA, genomics, etc. for me to question the validity of the genetic modification premise.

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      5. This is like Round 4 or 5 of you and me discussing this subject. 🙂 It’s the same subject. I appreciate you walking it back.

        It is not possible under natural law to both maximize yield and hardiness. There are no examples of doing so on planet earth. I challenge anybody here to come up with an example. In the hypothetical instance that they *had* tried to breed ultrahybridized (for yield) commodity crops for herbicide/pesticide resistance they would have absolutely failed because these plants do do much of anything anymore except photosynthesize and metabolize. They are effectively hydroponically grown because the herbicides have also killed off their soil symbionts and they are being forcefed salt-based fertilizer so that they can’t even produce exudates in order to feed the genesis of new microbes, which is the specific feat that ‘weeds’ are able to do in denatured soils with their special taproots that IMO share a fractal with the amazing mechanical power of fungi.

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      6. Case in point:

        “Resistance is not a new phenomenon, nor is it a direct result of the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMO), according to Michigan State University (MSU) researchers. Rather it’s a natural process that happens over time as pests that are already resistant to a certain type of removal mechanism find ways to survive and reproduce.

        “In weeds, what resistance comes down to is just the overuse of a particular herbicide that functions at the same place in the plants,” said Christy Sprague, MSU weed scientist.

        Sprague is quick to point out that the herbicides themselves don’t make a plant resistant; instead, a small percentage of plants are just naturally resistant to any given herbicide. What’s happening is called selection pressure, caused by applying the same herbicide over and over again, and it has occurred in crops for nearly half a century.

        “Once those resistant plants grow and they don’t die, they produce more seed and suddenly the [resistant] population expands,” Sprague said. “One of the first weeds identified in Michigan that was resistant was atrazine-resistant common lambsquarters back in the early ’70s. Since then, we’ve seen multiple weed species that have become resistant to herbicides.”

        https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/resistance-yesterday-today-tomorrow

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      7. Sounds a lot like “quantum computing,” which is a marketing term used to fool investors (though in a virology kind of way, i.e., probably even the people at the computing company believe or partly believe it, because it’s based on [pseudo]science).
        It would surely be tempting for agri companies to try to market the results of their selective breeding work as something based on high technology, especially if in their breeding experiments they fiddled with some cells in a lab in a way that fooled their biologists into believing they “genetically modified” them.
        Being a trade secret, there’s no need to reveal what they actually did, and patents serve as good cover even if they never use the method in the patent and it doesn’t in fact work (the patent office does not check such things; rather, the logic of the invention is evaluated by someone skilled in the art (of “genetic engineering”) and therefore beholden to the same self-fooling paradigm). Cf. the “gain of function” related patents. They would serve as part of a smokescreen and/or self-fooling process all too familiar in pseudoscience. All this proves nothing, of course, but it is suggestive.
        As an aside, the sociology of pseudoscience is a fascinating topic in general. Norman Wildberger has done some work on this front in mathematics (for example, https://youtu.be/H84VyZCOCew), as has Steve Patterson (e.g., https://youtu.be/-vYOaagwWZc or https://steve-patterson.com/our-present-dark-age-part-1/) though both these guys unfortunately haven’t looked into virology yet.

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      8. Exactly. They can concoct whatever story they like and hide behind proprietary recipes, trade secrets, and patents in order to sell the myth of technological advancements to prop up a false science.

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    1. Plants can become resistance through breeding naturally or artificially.

      Another case in point:

      “With the help of plant breeders, fruit growers have taken advantage of the gene pool’s natural variability in a process known as artificial selection. The first step in this process is to identify desirable traits, such as flavor, color, tolerance, or resistance to a pest. Once desirable traits are identified, these can be incorporated into new crop varieties THROUGH CONVENTIONAL BREEDING or genetic engineering. For example, apples have been bred to create a few varieties that are resistant to apple scab. Even without specific breeding efforts, fruit crop varieties display a natural range of resistance to various pests and diseases. WHEN MONOCULTURES OF SINGLE VARIETIES ARE PLANTED, EFFICIENCY OF PRODUCTION IS TRADED FOR DIVERSITY OF RESISTANCE TO PESTS.”

      https://www.canr.msu.edu/grapes/integrated_pest_management/how-pesticide-resistance-develops

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      1. I’m not disputing that. Referencing academic agricultural edumacation heads us into plant germ theory. Let’s not go there.

        The robustness of plants begins and ends with soil quality just as it does with the robustness of people. The holograph comes first and the metaconsciousness follows.

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      2. So we agree then that plants can adapt and become naturally resistant to herbicides and pesticides? Thus, it is possible that GMO crops are nothing more than seeds from plants that were bred to be resistant to Round-Up.

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      3. Yes and no. As in not exactly. Not like that. Plants aren’t ‘resistant’ to poisons any more than people are ‘resistant’ to poison. Can we build up some tolerance to them out of necessity, by our intelligent, ancestral bodies having to focus on that
        specific task over generations? Sure. But that doesn’t make it a done deal for a weed to be born and claim resistance. It only gets out of life what it individually puts into it.

        But there are other factors. For example, organic economic growth on this planet topped out about 15 years ago. The world, in every way except blowing financial bubbles, has been watering down best practices ever since because when real growth ends debasement begins. Farmers get pinched and deeper in debt, cut costs, don’t invest in new equipment don’t maintain old spray equipment well enough, applications are uneven, farmers get stressed, get old and the sons long gone, the climate gets more difficult to work the automated, paint by numbers planting schedule which determines when you spray and when you plant, wind blows weed seeds after enough of the herbicide has entered the creek or the groundwater, birds transfer seed, and lo and behold green stuff comes out of the crack in the sidewalk, and the totalitarian culture that lives in a hermetically sealed bubble looks at these ‘weeds’ just as they look at germs, and say they must be mutating, that’s a bad thing, and we must do something about it. All this stuff is old news and the only reason academia is now focusing on the stupid greed of the ‘green revolution’ is because it’s on its last legs so they’re just preparing the ground for the new crop in the name of political cover, as always.

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  16. And no, like I said, it’s not possible to breed back for the resistance without losing commercially viable yields. These plants are equivalent of the ubiquitous Cornish cross meat chicken. If you have ever seen one in real life you will understand what I mean. If you put the waterer too far away from them, as in like 20 feet, some of them will die. Expecting a GMO crop to be bred back for exceptional hardiness is like expecting a Cornish cross to beat

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    1. …any laying hen across the yard to eat some black soldier fly larvae that someone’s just brought in. Not gonna happen. It’s like having a community of a hundred Down’s Syndrome folks and expecting them to turn out at least one professional athlete after ten generations. Also not going to happen.

      There’s no starting point. The layer is already wolfing down the bugs before the CC even realizes what’s going on, if it can even see that far. You can’t do anything with that and get them to 5lbs at 6 weeks or whatever at the same time.

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    2. They have been breeding crops for resistance for generations. There are many methods.

      “Several means of obtaining disease-resistant plants are commonly employed alone or in combination. These include introduction from an outside source, selection, and induced variation. All three may be used at different stages in a continuous process; for example, varieties free from injurious insects or plant diseases may be introduced for comparison with local varieties. The more promising lines or strains are then selected for further propagation, and they are further improved by promoting as much variation as possible through hybridization or special treatment. Finally, selection of the plants showing greatest promise takes place. Developing disease-resistant plants is a continuing process.

      Special treatments for inducing gene changes include the application of mutation-inducing chemicals and irradiation with ultraviolet light and X-rays. These treatments commonly induce deleterious genetic changes, but, occasionally, beneficial ones also may occur.

      Methods used in breeding plants for disease resistance are similar to those used in breeding for other characters except that two organisms are involved—the host plant and the pathogen. Thus, it is necessary to know as much as possible about the nature of inheritance of the resistant characters in the host plant and the existence of physiological races or strains of the pathogen.”

      https://www.britannica.com/science/plant-disease/Obtaining-disease-resistant-plants

      Conventional Breeding:

      “Conventional plant breeding has been going on for hundreds of years, and is still commonly used today. It is known as the breeding or planting, which uses chemical ways like chemical fertilisers or synthetic components.”

      https://www.biologydiscussion.com/plant-breeding/plant-breeding-for-disease-and-pest-resistance/56283

      The use of chemical pesticides and herbicides is relatively new. It is not far-fetched to believe that they have found a way to breed crops to be resistant to their chemicals as they have done with pests/diseases.

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    1. I don’t have to accept a false paradigm because of a lack of evidence. That is a logical fallacy. Plant breeding has been going on for centuries. They can breed plants to become resistant to many things. This is common practice. The extraordinary claim is that they can go in and manipulate specific genes in the seeds in order for them to behave how they want. There needs to be solid proof this is the case.

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      1. I said bring into question a (potentially) false paradigm. I didn’t say to accept a new false paradigm. The point of purposeful, honest change is always to accept new true paradigms.

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  18. I’m saying that genes exist and they can be fiddled with to the great disrespect of natural law. I’m aware of your position. Thanks for another conversation, friend.

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