Peter Duesberg on Why Robert Koch’s Postulates are Germane to Infectious Diseases
German physician and microbiologist, Robert Koch (1843–1910) is considered the founder of modern bacteriology. He identified the causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax, supporting the concept of infectious diseases.
Peter Duesberg is a professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has challenged the virus-AIDS hypothesis in various medical and scientific journals.
Simply Charly: German physician Robert Koch’s (1843–1910) discovery of the anthrax bacillus in 1876 launched the field of medical bacteriology and led to a “golden age” of scientific discovery. Can you give us a brief background of the medical milieu from which Koch made his most important and enduring discoveries?
Peter Duesberg: Koch is the father of “the germ theory” of disease, which is perhaps the greatest ever success story in medicine and biology. Therefore, it is on the mind of every medical researcher and student as a model for new careers. The germ theory has been the background for the discovery of many microbial pathogens and beyond — meaning efforts to blame non-microbial diseases on microbes — as in the case of AIDS now.
SC: Koch’s postulates, his criteria for establishing whether a microbe and a…
