Article #2: Your Probing Mind By V. V. Vetrano, B.S., D.C.

What is the Hygienic viewpoint of viruses and their effects on living cells?

This question is a little difficult to answer because virology is still in its childhood. Their nature is still not known. Are they plants, chemicals, animals, or parasites? No one knows exactly what they are.

Boyd states that a virus "represents a most minute and primitive form of life. Even this statement may be questioned, for the virus seems to exist in the dim borderland between living things and chemical compounds. It is a submicroscopic unit containing nucleic acid and protein. Unlike bacteria, viruses are not capable of supporting life on their own, owing to a lack of enzymes. In order to exist and multiply, they must occupy living cells, which provide them with necessary material and energy. ... It is evident that a virus is a perfect example of a parasite."

Some viruses live and grow only in man. Others prefer other animals. Some of them like to live only in specific tissues such as nerve tissue (neurotropic), while others prefer the skin, and are called dermotropic. Still others are viscerotropic, meaning that they live in the viscera of animals.

The current knowledge of the virus seems to point clearly to its parasitic nature. Knowing the nature of viruses gives us a clue as to how to "defend" ourselves from them, if, indeed, we need defending. They, like bacteria, may end up being our benefactors instead of our enemies. Their outstanding characteristic is that they cannot multiply unless in a living cell. Since they live within the cell, dosing ourselves with antibiotics and other drugs such as the sulfonamides will not destroy them.

Viruses, being mainly proteinaceous in nature, occasion antibody formation when they are in the bloodstream. The body acts against them to destroy them, just as it destroys bacteria. A healthy body can destroy them as rapidly as they are formed. Even though they are somewhat protected within the cell from the antibodies, a healthy cell can keep them under control and prevent them from overwhelming the cell.

A medical differentiation is made between a viral infection and viral disease. A host may be infected with a virus but not manifest a disease. In the case of viral infection multiplication of the virus can proceed without damage to the cell. When there is a viral disease, the cell shows pathological changes, usually in the form of degeneration. Boyd thinks that viral infection is universal but that viral disease is relatively rare. He says, "viral infection is very much commoner than viral disease—indeed it may be universal. Thus polio virus infection is many hundred times commoner than the disease, and adenovirus infection of the tonsils is present in about 90 percent of normal persons, although disease caused by these viruses occurs in a very small percentage.

"In viral infection, a virus may sojourn indefinitely in the comfortable surroundings of the cell. It is more than a boarder, for it has become one of the family, and it can live with the family for generations without causing trouble. Various internal or external agents may upset the harmony and convert the latent virus into a virulent one, which usurps the cell's biosynthetic machinery for the production, almost exclusively, of viral progeny (Swartz and Littlefield). Such factors as age, genetic makeup, nutrition, or hormonal balance may be responsible. So may bacterial infection, one of the best examples being the well-known relation between the herpes simplex ("cold sore" on the lip) and pneumococcal pneumonia. Influenza is believed with reason to predispose the patient to respiratory tract bacterial infection, but it is also possible that such an infection may precipitate an attack of influenza through the conversion of a latent into an active virus.

"It is now known that a protein is produced by virus-treated cells in tissue culture which is capable of inhibiting or interfering with the growth of many other viruses. This material has been named interferon, and it seems to have many of the properties of a viral antibiotic, so that we may hear more of it in the future (Isaacs and Burke). Recovery, as opposed to immunity, does not depend on the production of antibodies. The factors responsible for recovery are at present unknown.

"The practical importance of the theoretical considerations which have just been outlined lies in the fact that as viral disease is dependent on viral reproduction, and as viral reproduction is dependent on biochemical processes, it may be possible to interfere with these processes and thus inhibit reproduction by chemical compounds. First steps in this direction have already been taken, but we have to face the unfortunate fact that by the time signs and symptoms of disease are apparent, reproduction for the virus is far advanced. It is evident that the control of viral diseases presents the same formidable obstacles as the control of cancer and for the same reason, namely that we are dealing with a disorder within the cell itself."

I quoted extensively from Boyd because I wanted you to read the medical man's words yourself. When analyzing his writing, we learn that a virus can be present without a disease being manifest and without the disease necessarily developing even in the future.

In fact, we learned that 90% of normal persons can harbor a virus and only a few of this percentage develop the disease the virus is supposed to cause. Viral disease, like bacterial diseases, require something else or some other enervating substance or influence to prostrate the body's protective functions permitting the virus to run away with the biological activities within the cell.

We also learned about interferon. This indicates that the body does have a means within the cell of protecting itself, thus preventing the virus from multiplying within the cell. It has always been totally unthinkable to me that a virus could enter a ceil, and take over without the least bit of biological protest. Now we have learned that the body protects itself from viruses just like it does from bacteria and their toxins. Our job is to supply our bodies with the necessary materials and influences which promote health and protection.

We learned also that there are "carriers" of viruses just as there are "carriers" of bacteria. A "carrier" is a person in a state of impaired health but not yet sick enough to go to bed. This state of lowered vitality is low enough to permit the virus to exist, but not low enough to permit it to multiply so much that it produces apparent degeneration of the cell. This takes years. Greater health will enable the host to destroy the viruses, and less health will cause the carrier to develop a so-called viral disease.

As Hygienists, we know that there is no such thing as a viral disease. There are simply stales of impaired health with cell degeneration. That the virus is an entity and that it occasions cellular degeneration is stilt a mute question. The so-called viruses may simply be the various toxic debris that Hygienists have been condemning and shouting about for many years. Not wanting to keep the toxin in the bloodstream, the body may find a means of encapsulating it in a protein membrane and injecting it into a cell to get it out of the bloodstream. Eventually these toxins pervert the metabolism of the cell and cause cellular degeneration. The virus may be only encapsulated protein, the body having surrounded it with a membrane to prevent an excess from upsetting the system. The modern high protein diet may be the reason for so-called viral infections.

Another thing we gleen from the foregoing quotation from Boyd is the manner in which the medical man thinks. Instead of thinking in terms of improving the person's health with the normal elements of physiology, he thinks in terms of a chemical which will destroy the virus although he previously pointed out the fact that the cell can protect itself with interferon, and although he mentioned the factors which may make a latent virus become active. Instead of telling us to avoid these factors, he searches for a chemical panacea. It has been proven with antibiotic therapy that you can't kill all bacteria with antibiotics and often instead of destroying the bacteria, the drug simply produces a mutant strain that is resistant to the chemical or antibiotic, and the bacteria thrive in the host despite the drug.

But the host's health is destroyed and his ability to destroy bacteria is at the same time depressed by the antibiotic. Instead of making the host immune to disease and bacteria, it makes him more susceptible. The same can be said of any drug, which may be produced, that will kill viruses. If it is destructive to the virus, it will also be destructive to those taking the drug.

Many important facts have been brought to the surface by modern research. What is so remarkable, is that every time something new is learned it only strengthens and confirms the Hygienic viewpoint of disease.

We have learned that viruses vary just as do bacteria. Something causes them to change from a virulent virus to a nonvirulent one or vice versa. What causes this? In bacteria, it is their environment. If the environment is toxic and the bacteria must live on filth, they become virulent. There is every reason to believe that viruses in a toxic environment filled with an excess of metabolic waste products and environmental poisons, will also become virulent because of their nourishment.

An article from the Cyclopedia of Medicine written by Edwin W. Schultz, M.D. clearly points out that viruses change. He states,

"Considerable experimental work has been done on variation in viruses. It is well established that viruses do undergo variations, including variation in virulence, in antigenic structure, and in the character of the lesions induced. Sometimes the variations are of a stable mutation type, at other times, not. While viruses have been compared with self-perpetuating genes, little is known regarding the genetics of viruses.
"The capacity of viruses to undergo variation has also been studied in the laboratory. Certain variations have been induced in vaccinia virus and other pock viruses. The conversion of 'street virus' to 'fixed' rabies virus it a classical example of laboratory adaptation. In its passage from brain to brain in rabbits, street virus loses its ability to progress along peripheral nerves; this is a variation relating to its tropism. It occurs without significant changes in antigenic properties. With some viruses, however, appreciable shifts may sometimes occur in the antigenic properties when these are passed long enough in a new type of host. Among the more important variations, which have been induced under artificial conditions, is the transformation of yellow fever virus under tissue culture conditions from a primarily viscerotropic virus to one which has not only lost its viscerotropism, but inherent neurotropism as well, arid this without significant alteration of its natural antigenic properties. Strain 17D, now employed in immunizing against yellow fever, has this history."

Again the physician is thinking in terms of using this newfound knowledge wrongly. Instead of learning that a healthy body will destroy the virus and that it can even turn a virulent virus into a nonvirulent one so that it will not cause any pathological degeneration, they are still thinking in terms of immunizing the body against the virus, which is impossible anyway because of the many different strains of the same virus.

That the immunizing process is fraught with great danger is brought out in the following quotation from the the same author. "A certain degree of pliability in a virus can prove a useful property. If a virus can be made to give up its natural virulence without significant change in its anti-genic properties, it may become useful as a vaccine. What will happen when it is placed in a new environment is, however, often unpredictable. Merely carrying it under such conditions for a time gives no assurance that a change in virulence or other properties has been induced. Proof that such a useful change has been effected may require lengthy experimental observations to determine not only the degree of the change, but the stability of the change."

In summary, all the newer knowledge about viruses only strengthens, corroborates, and substantiates the Hygienic viewpoint of all bacteria, parasites, and viruses. The healthy body has its means of destroying and eliminating them from the system. If you are in a state of impaired health, drugs and vaccines do no good whatsoever. They further weaken the organism and intoxicate the system, making it even more susceptible to parasitic and bacterial invasion.

Furthermore, we just learned of the hazards of injecting attenuated viruses. They can backfire and become virulent again. Many children became paralyzed after taking Sabin and Salk vaccines. The means of health and only the means of health are useful in states of disease. If a substance bears no normal relation to the body and if it is not generally used in any of its biochemical or physiological processes, then it does not belong in the body even if it does kill bacteria and viruses in the test tube. We are dealing with living organisms, not minced tissue growing in a culture in the lab. Let us rely on the only reliable means left, and those are the primordial requisites of life.

(Editor's Note: While the above article gives credence to medical views, it is, nevertheless an excellent Hygienic presentation. Students should now know that so-called viruses are only cellular debris, being, particularly, the remnants of genetic material from cellular mitochondria. This debris, along with other uneliminaled wastes, constitutes the morbid material the body endeavors to expel when it institutes an eliminative crisis called sickness, disease, etc.)