Views from Crestmont Drive

Busy day today so just one item. We’ve had the flat-earthers, the chem-trailers, the vaccine deniers, and now there are those who deny the germ theory of disease.

Boing Boing, Jennifer Sandlin, 10 Nov 2024: Germ theory denial is dangerous and on the rise

This links to a piece from a couple years ago at Popular Science, focusing more on how this issue derives from a rivalry between two 19th century scientists: This pseudoscience movement wants to wipe germs from existence

RFK Jr. apparently embraces something called “terrain theory” as an alternative to germ theory. I’ve never heard the term before this.

[Isobel Whitcomb] defines terrain theory as a wide range of beliefs that range from the “total denial of the existence of viruses and bacteria” to the idea that lifestyle choices are what determine whether “otherwise benevolent microbes to transform into pathogens.” The main idea is that it’s the body’s ecosystem, or “terrain”—and NOT germs or pathogens—that allows disease to foster. This line of thought has bolstered the ideas that masks, vaccines, and other infectious disease mitigations are not only unnecessary, but also harmful to one’s “natural immunity.” Whitcomb also strongly stresses the point that terrain theory has NO legitimacy among the actual, real scientific community.

The articles goes on with claims of how metastatic cancer can be controlled by diet, how rabies does not exist, how “they” are lying to you and how nothing has been proven, e.g. reports of plagues like Ebola were all faked. They’re reports from a fantasy world.

The pattern here is familiar. Basic naive human nature perceives agency in all things, cannot believe that things exist which cannot be seen (such as “germs”), revels in conspiracy stories in which “others” are enemies and are out to take advantage of those who are savvy enough to perceive the “truth”; and so reverts to ancient, intuitive ways of thinking about disease as being due to vapors, or dank air, or the four humours (black bile, blood, yellow bile, and phlegm, aligning with earth, air, fire, and water), and so on. Since, as their religions tell them, the only truth is what the ancients understood, and nothing real has been learned since then.

(What could be next? Deny plate tectonic theory and blame earthquakes on underground demons? Or on gays and an angry God?)