THE FOUR POSTULATES OF ROBERT KOCH
by Professor Pietro Croce, MD           full text
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1. All infectious disease is cause by a pathogen organism.

2. That organism must be obtained in pure culture.

3. The organism obtained in culture must reproduce in experimental animals.

4. The pathogen organism must be recovered from the animals used for the experimentation, so vaccines can be produced.

Items one (1) and two (2) are obviously right.

Items three (3) and four (4) are obviously wrong..

Let us explain why:

Item three
At his time (1843-1910), Robert Koch could not suspect that one day his third postulate could be contradicted by unequivocal examples. His fault was to generalize his statement, and not to foresee the possibility that, sooner or later, his postulate could be proved wrong.

Most of all, he ignored that only a few experimental animals are subject to the bacterial, fungal, or helminthic infections which are common in man and also most viral disease (viruses having been discovered in the late 1800's).

About viruses, Koch should have imagined the possible existence of organisms much smaller than bacteria. I said "he should have imagined". Indeed, imagination should be an endowment of all true scientists, not to be confined exclusively to artists like Julius Berne, Picasso, Chagal, etc. Even "science fiction" could sooner or later prove true.

It is sad to realize that Robert Koch has been a victim of that "scientism" which prevailed in his times (and unfortunately still dominates our society); the philosphy "I don't believe what I can't see or touch", which damages the human mind more than schizophrenia, paranoia, depression. Indeed, we don't see or touch among others, ultraviolet and infrared light, radio waves, cosmic rays, ionizing energies.

Item Four
Item four states: "The pathogen organism must be recovered from the animals used for the experimentation, so vaccines can be produced".

The first part is wrong for the reasons discussed under Item 3. Question: How could we recover a "pathogen organism" from an animal which doesn't contract the corresponding disease, not even when injected directly? How could we recover "Mycobacterium leprae" (Hansens's bacillus) from animals, knowing that leprosy doesn't affect any known animal? (Only the armadillo develops a localized granuloma on condition that the bacillus be injected in the pulp of the paw. But leprosy is a generalized, though slowly progressing, disease. Norwegian Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen discovered the leprosy bacillus in 1871, i.e. eleven years before Robert Koch discovered Mycobacterium tuberculosis as the agent of human tuberculosis.

And what about viruses? Not knowing the existence of viruses, Koch couldn't have suspected, for example, that distemper is a disease that affects dogs, cats, and horses, but not humans. Equally, he couldn't have suspected that feline leukemia is a viral disease never affecting humans and vice versa, that human leukemia doesn't affect felines. Nevertheless, in his third and fourth postulates Koch decreed that the "infectious organism" must be injected into experimental animals. A further example: could anybody ever prove that the human influenza viruses affect domestic pets?

In conclusion, Koch's four postulates cannot be applied in medical research, but that doesn't keep them from still being studied in our universities!

The fourth postulate ends with "so vaccines can be reproduced" demonstrating a pathetically naive faith in the efficacy of vaccines, a subject worthy of further, deeper discussion.

N.B. The four postulates are attributed to Robert Koch but, in reality, had been previously announced by Friedrich Gustav Henle (1809-1885)

Vicenza, March 9, 1996

Professor Croce, a member of the American College of Pathologists, headed the laboratory of microbiological-pathological anatomy and chemoclinical analyses at the research hospital L. Sacco of Milan, Italy. A graduate of the University of Pisa where he was indoctrinated in the practice of vivisection, he eventually renounced that "stale, positivistic logic" describing it as a "methodological error" after struggling to reconcile discrepancies. He is currently the honorary president of Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine in London and the author of VIVISECTION OR SCIENCE ($22 from Civitas, Box 26, Swain NY 14884 USA)


PCRM GOADS GOV'T ON MAD COW DISEASE
Dr. Neal Barnard, chair of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM, POB 6322, Washington DC 20015 ), arrived at the White House lugging a plastic tub containing 60 pounds of rendered animal remains in order to protest President Clinton's decision to aid the ailing beef industry by purchasing $50 million worth of dead cows for school lunch programs.

This action last spring followed a press conference at the National Press Club at which PCRM tried to alert the media to the possibility that America will experience an epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy as a result of the same circumstances that caused the disease to escalate in Britain: incorporating infected dead animals in feed for living animals.

Centers for Disease Control figures from 1979-90 reveal that 23 of 2,614 American victims of Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) were in their 30's and three in their 20's, indicating that a faster-acting variant of the disease may already be present here as it is in Britain. Because of its long incubation period, the disease has in the past typically affected people in their 60's and 70's.

With dead cows being fed to pigs and chickens and chicken manure being fed to cows, it is easy to understand how the disease has gained a foothold. (A call to the Department of Agriculture on December 2 determined that keeping sheep remains that are potentially infected with scrapie, the ovine form of the disease, out of the animal food chain is still a voluntary matter left in the hands of rendering plants and their employees.)

PCRM is seeking federal legislation to ban the feeding of dead animals to animals being raised for human food and closer inspection of remains to determine if encephalopathies are present.

Apart from the risk of encephalopathy, "consumption of livestock products is clearly linked to a much higher risk of serious and sometimes fatal diseases....(including) coronary artery disease, colon and possibly other forms of cancer, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and infection with salmonella, campylobacter, and E.coli 0157.H7, among others. Making meat 'safe' is not a realistic or attainable goal."   

Good Medicine  Summer 1996
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