There's an interesting similarity between creationists and germ theory deniers. Both like to point to the flaws in Darwin's theory or Pasteur's germ theory in order to justify their rejection of the theories and preference for "alternate" theories.
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Basically, both creationists and germ theory deniers like to focus on Darwin and Pasteur, as if evolutionary theory and germ theory, respectively, had been frozen in amber sometime in the late 1800s and hadn't advanced enormously since then.
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Then, of course, there are the deathbed "recantations." Both creationists and germ theory deniers have spread stories of "death bed" conversions or recantations. Darwin, it was claimed by Elizabeth Cotton in 1915 (30 years after his death), had "recanted" on his deathbed.
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Similarly, it was claimed that Louis Pasteur's last words were, "“Bernard avait raison. Le germe n’est rien, c’est le terrain qui est tout.” ("Bernard is correct. The germ is nothing. The soil is everything.")
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Claude Bernard was another scientist who, like Béchamps, believed in "terrain theory." He had described the milieu intérieur, the interstitial fluids regarded as an internal environment in which the cells of the body are nourished and maintained in a state of equilibrium.
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Of course, as I described, there is no evidence whatsoever that Pasteur said any such thing on his deathbed.https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/germ-theory-denial-in-the-age-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/ …
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Australian skeptic
@RatbagsDotCom wrote about the lie of Pasteur's "deathbed conversion" back in 2004. https://peterbowditch.com/comment/skeptic0409_pasteur.htm …1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @gorskon @arstechnica and
Anyway, germ theory denial is nothing new. It's always been part and parcel of antivaccine beliefs. Think of it this way. If microbes don't cause disease by themselves, then vaccines are not necessary. So of course antivaxxers love germ theory denial.
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Replying to @gorskon @arstechnica and
Among alternative medicine practitioners and believers, if the "terrain" is all and the germs are only a manifestation of a bad "terrain" or can only cause disease in a favorable terrain, then you can make yourself immune to disease if only you "fix" your "terrain."
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Replying to @gorskon @arstechnica and
According to alternative medicine, fixing your terrain, of course, eating the correct diet, taking the correct supplements, doing the correct things. If you do those things, according to this view, you will be virtually immune to infectious disease because of your "terrain."
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What makes this view seductive is, of course, that there is a grain of truth in it. People with poor health are often more susceptible to infectious diseases (or to severe outcomes if they get sick). The problem, of course, is that perfectly healthy people can die of infection.
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Replying to @gorskon @arstechnica and
I like to point out how the 1918 influenza pandemic got its start in the US in the barracks of a military base in Kansas among healthy young men.
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Replying to @gorskon @arstechnica and
I'll finish with the most hilarious example of germ theory denial. It came from
@billmaher in 2008, when Bob Costas took him down a notch after he had bragged that he wouldn't get the flu on a plane because his lifestyle made him so resistant.1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes - Show replies
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