These ideas as outmoded. They mattered 100 years ago. I suspect that the germ theory of disease is the primary tool we used to extend the human lifespan beyond 30 years. This theory assumes that the human body is a machine that must be protected from parasites (germs?). The theory leads to many good suggestions. For example, consider the example of cleanliness during childbirth. Before the germ theory was accepted it was common for mothers to die soon after giving birth. Now it is rare. If the attending physician washed his/her hands, more mothers survived. The statistics were obvious, and people realized they must be protected from “germs.” This helped us all realize the importance of protecting our bodies from external organisms.
The germ theory of disease has served us very well. As a result we now demand clean drinking water and proper treatment of sewage. We in the western world now have a lifespan far in excess of 30 years. There is evidence that lifespan continues to increase even today.
The theory has benefited us enormously. However, once we consider the chronic conditions of an aging population, there is reason to wonder whether there is something missing in it. In the United States we have the most expensive medical system in the world. However, we don't have the longest lifespan. Our lifespan is one of the shortest among the modern western nations. Why? Although our medicine is excellent during emergencies, it apparently does not help us solve chronic problems. For example, there is excellent evidence that cancer treatment does not extend the life of the patient. Other examples include the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and the large number of people who die as the result of medical error. The dedicated medical profession deserves better results. Is nature attempting to show us something? Perhaps the germ theory of disease is being used in the wrong place, or perhaps it is incomplete. Would a revised version of it better serve us as we face the chronic problems of those who live beyond the age of bearing children?
We cannot simply declare that the germ theory of disease is wrong. This theory works perfectly where it is appropriate. However, I suggest that the chronic problems of an aging population may be better served from a different understanding of the role of all these “germs.”
It may seem strange that I ask the reader to question such a major building block of our world. Perhaps my background as a physics teacher has made me more willing to re-examine something we all “know.”.
As a physicist I am familiar with times in our history when new situations have demanded humans enlarge their ideas. Our understanding of light provides an excellent example. In the 1700's Isaac Newton considered light a stream of tiny balls. He imagined these little balls illuminating a surface as they hit it. Late in his life he saw experiments that forced him to accept that light was a wave. More than a century later, studies of electricity and magnetism showed that light was actually a wave of the fields associated with electricity and magnetism. However, during the 20th century Albert Einstein showed that light always traveled at the same speed. He was right, but the waves we are familiar with don't behave like that. In our experience waves travel in a medium. For example water waves travel on water. The speed of the water changes the speed of the waves. A light wave travels on - what? Our present answer seems to be: nothing. What kind of wave is that? Einstein was also involved with the quantum theory. When an atom absorbs light, the atom absorbs a particle. We call this particle a photon. But light is a wave, and waves don't have particles. How can there be a particle of a wave? That is nonsense. Worse yet, the energy carried by the photon depends on the frequency of the light. That also makes no sense. Particles don't have frequencies; only waves do. Do we understand light? Not really. I have noticed the world outside my classroom does not seem too upset about my confusion.
Our present-day world depends on the information we uncovered when we attempted to answer these puzzling questions. We may not understand what light is, but we have made wonderful use of the information we found as we chased the puzzle. Our engineering of light has produced spectacular results. This engineering is based on the discoveries of the physicists who bother their wives with impossible questions. We have the Hubble telescope, the Internet (which depends on the transmitting and receiving light signals all over the globe), lasers, and GPS, the global positioning system that so many of us depend on. Our engineering of light is not hampered by physicists who quibble about whether or not we “understand” it. We make good predictions that fit reality. So far these predictions agree with the most recent experiments physicists can think up. For example, the GPS system, with its constant communication between very accurate clocks on earth and in satellites, has become our best proof of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Isaac Newton's little balls could never have helped design these wonderful inventions. Chasing the truth has helped us create a world that Isaac Newton could never have imagined.
In physics we expand our ideas when good new experiments give us unexpected results that demand a new understanding. A new experiment, done all over the world, leaves us with no choice: the old theory can no longer account for the real world. The old theory must be replaced.
Progress happens when we ask good questions about whether a model fits reality. When reality changes it is time to re-examine our models. If the model stubbornly refuses to fit reality, it is time to revise our model. For the first time, we have a large population of people all over the globe who are living to great age. The germ theory of disease is a model that predicts people's inevitable death. No one knows if ultimately it will prove to be correct. The theory makes predictions. Do they fit reality?
The germ theory predicts that humans, like other mechanisms, must wear out. The purpose of medicine is to repair or replace the defective parts of the machine as the inevitable defects occur. Eventually the deterioration destroys the machine. That is, the individual dies. In other words, the germ theory requires the deterioration to eventually kill each of us. Modern western science is unable to use the word, “cure,” when discussing the chronic problems associated with aging. It speaks only of coping with them. A medical science based only on the germ theory cannot deal with the people who have cured themselves.
Yet there are many of these people. For the first time large numbers of people all over the globe are living to great age. As I understand the germ theory, it cannot accept this fact. Yet, when faced with an individual in his 70's who is more athletic than he ever was as a youth, the facts speak for themselves. This is the new experiment which will force us to re-examine this model. Certain individuals retain their health well beyond the years of child-bearing. While their friends and relatives age, weaken and die, these Individuals cure themselves of cancer, of senility, of lymphoma, of diabetes, and of heart disease. Instead of growing old and weak, their health improves. Ignoring these people doesn't make them go away. By now there are too many of them. You have the right to dismiss their healing as “miraculous.” However, all healing is a miracle. That's nice. However, calling it a miracle does not make it unreal. The model must be able to account for such people. You also have the right to learn from these folk and live a better life. Which choice do you make? I suggest you learn what they did and become the next miracle. I have cured myself of several of these “incurable” diseases. Ignoring me doesn't make me go away either.
Even death does not always follow the germ-theory rules. There are many stories of well-adjusted people who simply decide it is time to turn out the light. They peacefully die. You may remember someone who did that. That machine didn't wear out. It turned itself off. No one pretends that germs did that. We need a theory that can accept that also. The theory must also allow people to cure themselves. After all, many of us do that routinely. Better yet, is there a theory that can help all of us do that? There must be a model that allows for the possibility that you can decide for yourself whether to live or die. The germ theory can't do it.
There simply is more to a human being than a, “biological mechanism that must be protected from germs and other organisms.” Our understanding of this interaction is at the stage Newton was at when he thought light was little balls. It is time to ask if a different theory might fit the data better. It is apparent that something fundamental is wrong with the way we understand the aging human being. This is not surprising. After all, this is the first time in human history when so many people are doing it successfully. Someone might have predicted that we would be presented with a new reality.
What happens when someone attempts to really understand new phenomena in a world full of people who demand that the phenomena cannot occur? Do people respond favorably? Are they grateful? One way to attempt to answer that is to look at history. How did the world react in the past when someone challenged what everyone “knew?” Let's see how the world reacted after the telescope was invented. At the time everyone knew that the heavenly bodies (sun, moon, planets, etc) revolved around the earth. Galileo, a respected teacher, got a telescope. He used his new toy to look at the planet Jupiter. He saw small dots that circled slowly around it. Those little dots looked like moons of Jupiter. Those moons didn't revolve around the earth. But everyone “knew” that the heavenly bodies rotated only around the earth. If these moons didn't rotate around the earth, maybe nothing did.. Galileo suggested that the planets rotated around the sun. A lot of academic people were interested, especially when calculations were able, for the first time, to predict the motion of the planets. Most people didn't know or care. The Catholic Church did care. It had staked its credibility on the statement that the sun rotated around the earth..The Church forced Galileo to officially deny the possibility that the earth might be in orbit around the sun, even though many priests agreed with him.
Let's compare today with the world Galileo knew. We certainly have powerful forces which are not interested in progress. These are individuals and companies that sell products and services needed by unhealthy people. For example, consider skin-care products. In my youth (I am 67 years old at this writing.) there probably were none for sale in the local food store. At most there might be one. People just didn't look for them. Today there is a huge variety of such products for sale. A typical food store is likely to include more than 30 products. They must sell. People must be looking for them. People must realize that there is something wrong with their skin. This must be profitable to businesses connected with skin care. If everyone's skin were healthy and happy, I suspect the skin-care business would be less profitable. Consider the extreme case. Suppose it were possible to produce a skin-care product that actually damaged the skin while making a customer feel briefly better. Such a product would insure that skin-care products would remain profitable. This leads to the uncomfortable question whether the typical skin-care product does more harm than good.
It also suggests that there is a big market for the skin-care product that actually helps. Suppose someone invented a lotion that immediately helped everyone's skin become healthy. I suspect this industry would do what it could to prevent people from using it. We hope that, eventually, the better product does win, although there is likely to be a struggle. The better product does have one advantage: it works.
We do have one advantage in this situation. We ourselves are the experimental laboratory. We can test any answer we want to. If we are right, we cure ourselves of the chronic problems. Note that practicing medicine regards these problems as incurable. It says that, we must cope with them. Medicine, of course is a business that requires sick people who need help. Without the sick people, how could the doctor pay the rent?
Do we find a similar situation today? I am reminded of a recent case in which Dr. Hamer, the founder of German New Medicine, lost his medical license to practice in Germany and France. The charge recorded by the German court was that he was curing more than 90% of the people who came to him with cancer. The court decided he was not using standard methods. The court took away his right to practice medicine in France and Germany. He now practices in Spain. His ideas are on the Internet,, and doctors all over the globe are adopting his methods. They do it quietly though. They don't want to upset the present-day “church”, the medical accrediting agencies.
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