Germ theory denial is a major strain in antivaccine beliefs, and far more MDs than you’d think are open to such beliefs. They undergird antivax and alt med; you find them in antivax quacks and “integrative medicine” docs.https://twitter.com/SaadOmer3/status/1227333924650725376 …
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Admittedly, there are degrees of germ theory denial. Usually such docs spout “soft denial” quoting Antoine Béchamp’s “the terrain is everything,” that posts that microbes can’t cause disease in a healthy host.
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Vitalism goes back a long way.
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Denial of germ theory dates back to Pasteur’s first proposing it. Béchamp was a rival of Pasteur white idea was that it wasn’t the microbes that actually cause disease but that they were a manifestation of disease.
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Replying to @gorskon @UKHomeopathyReg
Basically, Béchamp argued that bacteria could not invade a healthy animal and cause disease. Instead he parlayed the existence of “microzymas” (tiny enzymes) as the elementary units of life.
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Replying to @gorskon @UKHomeopathyReg
Béchamp argued instead that unfavorable host and environmental conditions (bad “terrain”) destabilize the host's native microzymas, whereupon they decompose host tissue by producing pathogenic bacteria from the tissue.
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Replying to @gorskon @UKHomeopathyReg
A lot of modern germ theory denial invokes Béchamp. Now, at the time, given the tools and evidence available at the time, Béchamp’s ideas were not so ridiculous. They did ultimately lose out to Pasteur’s because the evidence didn’t support them and did support Pasteur.
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Replying to @gorskon @UKHomeopathyReg
There’s even a myth among the germ theory deniers that Pasteur “recanted” on his deathbed, admitting that Béchamp was right, saying, “The microbe is nothing. The terrain is all.” It’s BS. There’s no evidence Pasteur ever said that on hod’s deathbed. No biography says he did.
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On HIS deathbed.
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