Chiron and The Virus That Never Was

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CHIRON AND THE VIRUS THAT NEVER WAS

Release Date 2004-10-12

Time 13:21:00

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OCTOBER 12, 2004. Below is an excerpt from an article written by Dr.

Peter Duesberg and Bryan Ellison. It involves Chiron's role is

promoting the false discovery of an unproven disease, hepatitis C.

 

I have written about this phantom disease and phantom virus before.

 

In today's world of virology, the researchers are in a constant drool

to find new germs. There are major bucks and major prestige at stake.

 

Therefore, the procedures for truly isolating a virus and determining

that it plays role in disease are short-circuited. Just about

anything goes.

 

" We say it exists and therefore it does exist, and we will develop a

drug and a vaccine to fight it. "

 

As you'll see, Chiron parlayed its false science into fame and $$.

 

" Slow Viruses: The Original Sin Against the Laws of Virology "

 

Phantom Viruses and Big Bucks

 

Most virus hunters prefer chasing real, if arguably harmless, viruses

as their deadly enemies. But Gajdusek's " unconventional " viruses -

the ones neither he nor anyone else have ever found - have been

making a comeback in recent years.

 

Given the abundance of research dollars being poured into biomedical

science by the NIH and other agencies, opportunistic virus hunters

have been finding creative ways to cash in. One increasingly

successful method utilizes modern biotechnology to isolate viruses

that may not even exist.

 

Hepatitis, or liver disease, has yielded profitable virus-hunting

opportunities in recent years...

 

....This form of hepatitis [hepatitis C] does not behave as an

infectious disease, for it rigidly confines itself to people in well-

defined risk groups rather than spreading to larger populations or

even to the doctors treating hepatitis patients.

 

Yet virologists have been eyeing the disease from the beginning,

hoping one day to find a virus causing it. That day arrived in 1987.

The laboratory for the job was no less than the research facility of

the Chiron Corporation, a biotechnology company located directly

across the bay from San Francisco.

 

Equipped with the most advanced techniques, a research team started

its search in 1982 by injecting blood from patients into chimpanzees.

None of monkeys contracted hepatitis, although subtle signs vaguely

resembling infection or reddening did appear.

 

For the next step, the scientists probed liver tissue for a virus.

None could be found. Growing desperate, the team fished even for the

smallest print of a virus, finally coming across and greatly

amplifying a small piece of genetic information, encoded in a

molecule known as ribonucleic acid (RNA), that did not seem to belong

in the host's genetic code.

 

This fragment of presumably foreign RNA, the researchers assumed,

must be the genetic information of some undetected virus. Whatever it

was, liver tissue contains it only in barely detectable amounts. Only

about half of all hepatitis C patients contain the rare foreign RNA.

And in those who contain it, there is only one RNA molecule for every

ten liver cells - hardly a plausible cause for disease.

 

The Chiron team used newly available technology to reconstruct pieces

of the mystery virus. Now they could test patients for antibodies

against this hypothetical virus and soon discovered that only a

slight majority of hepatitis C patients had any evidence of these

antibodies in their blood.

 

Koch's first postulate, of course, demands that a truly harmful virus

be found in huge quantities in every single patient.

 

His second postulate requires that the virus particles be isolated and

grown, although this supposed hepatitis virus has never been found

intact.

 

And the third postulate insists that newly infected animals, such as

chimpanzees, should get the disease when injected with the virus. This

hypothetical microbe fails all three tests. But Koch's standards were

the furthest thing from the minds of the Chiron scientists when they

announced in 1987 that they had finally found the " hepatitis C "

virus.

 

Now more paradoxes are confronting the viral hypothesis. Huge numbers

of people testing positive for the hypothetical hepatitis C virus

never develop any symptoms of the disease, even though the " virus " is

no less active in their bodies than in hepatitis patients.

 

And according to a recent large-scale study of people watched for

eighteen years, those with signs of " infection " live just as long as

those without.

 

Despite these facts, scientists defend their still-elusive virus by

giving it an undefined latent period extending into decades.

 

Paradoxes like these no longer faze the virus-hunting research

establishment. Indeed, rewards are generally showered upon any new

virus hypothesis, no matter how bizarre. Chiron did not spend five

years creating its own virus for nothing. Having patented the test

for the virus, the company put it into production and began a

publicity campaign to win powerful allies.

 

The first step was a paper published in Science, the world's most

prestigious science magazine, edited by Dan Koshland, Jr., professor

of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at

Berkeley.

Edward Penhoet, chief executive officer for Chiron, also holds a

position as professor of molecular and cell biology at the University

of California at Berkeley.

 

The NIH-supported virology establishment soon lent the full weight of

its credibility to the hepatitis C virus camp. As Chiron's CEO

boasted, " We have a blockbuster product. "

 

A regulatory order from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to

test the blood supply would reap enormous sales for Chiron. Their big

chance presented itself in late 1988 as a special request from

Japanese Emperor Hirohito's doctors. The monarch was dying and

constantly needed blood transfusions; could Chiron provide a test to

make sure he received no blood tainted with hepatitis C?

 

The biotech company jumped at the opportunity, making for itself such

a name in Japan that the Tokyo government gave the product its

approval within one year. The emperor died in the meantime, but

excitement over Chiron's test was fueled when the Japanese government

placed hepatitis C high on its medical priority list.

 

Chiron's test kit now earns some $60 million annually in that country

alone. By the middle of 1990, the United States followed suit. The

FDA not only approved the test, but even recommended the universal

testing of donated blood.The American Association of Blood Banks

followed suit by mandating the $5 test for all 12 million blood

donations made each year in this country - raking in another $60

million annually for Chiron while raising the nation's medical costs

that much more.

 

And all this testing is being done for a virus that has never been

isolated. Profits from the test kit have generated another all-too-

common part of virus hunting. With Chiron's new income from the

hepatitis C test, Penhoet's company bought out Cetus, another biotech

company, founded by Donald Glaser, who, like Penhoet, also holds a

position as professor of molecular and cell biology at the University

of California at Berkeley. And Chiron made an unrestricted donation

of about 12 million to the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology

at the University of California at Berkeley that generates $100,000

in interest each year.

 

Unfortunately for Peter Duesberg, who belongs to the same department,

his supervisor is yet another professor who consults for Chiron

Corporation - and displays little sympathy for Duesberg for

challenging modern virus hunting by restricting his academic duties

to undergraduate student teaching and by not appointing him to

decision-making committees. Such conflicts of interest have become

standard fixtures in university biology departments.

 

The modern biomedical research establishment differs radically from

any previous scientific program in history. Driven by vast infusions

of federal and commercial money, it has grown into an enormous and

powerful bureaucracy that greatly amplifies its successes, all the

while stifling dissent. Such a process can no longer be called

science, which by definition depends on self-correction by internal

challenge and debate.

 

end of article excerpt

 

So, Chiron pretends to isolate a virus, and by welding together

powerful players in the virus-hunting field, steamrolls its way into

a new construct of a disease that has never been proven to exist. And

rakes in major $$$.

 

Chiron, who now has millions of contaminated flu vaccine shots loose

in the US.

 

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

http://www.nomorefakenews.com/archives/archiveview.php?key=2213

 

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