Alec Zeck's claims of the "end of virology" are VERY seriously flawed

He calls it "Perhaps The Most Important Work of Our Time." Hardly. It's all BAD science that proves (or disproves) absolutely nothing other than it is easy to fool people who are not scientists.

Nope. Should be titled “More very bad science that proves nothing other than if you don’t feed cells, they will die and some of the residue will have particles of various sizes and shapes that if you do not look closely can be misinterpreted as virions.”

Executive summary

Podcaster D. Alec Zeck is making outlandish claims about “the end of virology” using a series of flawed experiments and unconfirmed (by gene sequencing) observations in a video he is promoting. Don’t be fooled.

You simply ask to see the CPE and SARS-CoV-2 assessment made by the CLIA lab, not by Jamie.

Jamie pointed to a slide purportedly from the CLIA lab claiming CPE was observed. But you can’t validate it from the slide. I’ve asked Jamie for the contact at the CLIA lab that I can have my virology friends contact to verify. I said I’d be willing to sign an NDA to keep the lab identity secret since secrecy is important for proving things in science (you never want to disclose methods or people involved as that would not be “scientific” apparently).

Jamie remains silent on the SARS-CoV-2 question. Apparently, he thinks it’s OK to ignore my simple question as to why they didn’t do Sanger sequencing on their claim of creating SARS-CoV-2 de novo. This would have added just $150 to the total bill so it is de minimis. It is the minimum scientific requirement for an assertion that “this is SARS-CoV-2.”

And where are the endorsements from the Baileys and Andrew Kaufman of their experiment? Nowhere to be found! They should be huge supporters, but are keeping their distance by remaining silent.

I offered to bet people on the outcome of Jamie’s experiment, but only one guy was willing to put up $50,000. This shows how little confidence they have in their beliefs.

Mischaracterizing the Lanka court decision about measles

I’m going to start with the very end of the video which made it clear to me that either Jamie Andrews (the scientist featured in Zeck’s video) is either deliberately misleading people or simply not a very careful scientist. Either way, this should be very troubling that they have no trouble misrepresenting the facts in the public record regarding the Lanka case.

The Lanka court case story is easy to validate yourself which I did personally more than a year ago by reading the original court decisions which are in the public domain.

Jamie says at 1:52 into the video that “Stefan Lanka won where they had to admit that there was no scientific proof that the measles virus existed.”

Hardly. This is very false and misleading just like the rest of Alec’s video.

Lanka offered 100K euro prize money if someone could prove the measles virus existed. The prize money was claimed by Dr. David Bardens who proved in 6 papers that the measles virus existed. The German court agreed Bardens met his burden of proof.

But Lanka had the decision overturned by arguing that his challenge required the proof to be in a SINGLE paper, a condition he NEVER brought up in the lower court trial (because he realized it later as a way to get out of paying the bet).

And clearly Bardens didn’t realize it had to be in a single paper because Bardens put in a lot of work to assemble the 6 papers.

So the lower court ruled Bardens met the challenge and PROVED measles existed.

But a higher court pointed out Bardens supplied 6 papers instead of a SINGLE paper that Lanka argued he required a SINGLE paper.

Here is the exact wording of the decision, supplied by Jamie himself, which shows that the “single paper” limitation was why the decision was overturned, and not the scientific merits.

Isn’t it funny how Lanka NEVER brought the “single paper” argument up in the lower court? Why didn’t he? The answer is obvious: it’s because he figured the argument after he lost in the lower court. But he told people he didn’t bring it up because the court wouldn’t have believed him (even though it was in the plain language of his own offer).

This does NOT change the fact that Bardens proof that measles existed was affirmed in a court of law.

That determination was NEVER overturned by any court. Ever.

Science NEVER says you are restricted to a single paper to prove something.

So for Andrews to make the claim that “they had to admit that there was no scientific proof that the measles virus existed” isn’t anywhere close to the truth. I challenged Jamie to show that I am wrong.

Lanka simply won on a technicality: a strict interpretation of the exact wording of the challenge as requiring a single paper.

You can read the story here. The key piece is this:

In the higher court’s ruling (here), the judge noted that in the lower court, “it was proven that the publications submitted by the plaintiff (Bardens) in their entirety provided evidence of the existence and causative properties of the measles virus and that the determination of the diameter in the form requested by the defendant was successful (and) the result is not objectionable” (clause 104).

But the higher court also noted that one of Lanka’s criteria, that the proof be contained in a single scientific paper, rather than multiple papers, had not been met by Bardens (clause 122).

Anyone serious about science would never say, “You have to prove that measles exists within a SINGLE scientific paper.” If measles can be proven to exist in two (or more) scientific papers, should we believe that measles does not exist?

Is Jamie going to recant his statement? I’m not aware of him doing that.

Nor am I aware of Alec Zeck acknowledging the clear misinformation spread by Jamie.

I predict they’ll just let it stand without any apology for misleading people. And that says a lot about their character.

Key points Jamie Andrews claimed in the video

I’ll save you the two hours to watch the video. Here are the key points that were made:

1. If you starve cells of nutrients, they will die

2. If you add sputum to the mix and starve the cells, they will also die

3. They falsely claim this death is what virologists observe as cytopathic effect (CPE) and they claim that it proves that CPE is not caused by any virus because it occurs without adding a virus.

4. After the cells die, if you examine the material under an electron microscope, you can find isolated extracellular structures that look similar in size and shape to SARS-CoV-2, measles, and HIV structures.

And that’s it.

This is their PROOF that virology is a fraud!

Many problems with their “experiment”

If they are going to criticize virology, they should be using a scientific method with controls. They didn’t do that. They NEVER compared virus vs. no virus. That’s why they have not convinced a single virologist with their experiment. They are expecting that people who are not trained in virology will conclude they have exposed the “fraud.”

The reason they can’t find anyone credible to endorse their work is because it proves nothing.

For example:

1. At no time did they add a real virus to the mix and measure the differential cell death to quantify the level of CPE. So there was no true independent variable that was manipulated to see if there was a change in the dependent variable. This is basic science. If there is no differential cell death rate when a virus (which would have had to have been previously demonstrated to grow aggressively in the chosen medium) is added, then you’ve got something to talk about. BUT THEY NEVER DID THAT. THEY NEVER ADDED ANY VIRUS AT ALL!!! If they wanted to prove CPE doesn’t cause cell death from a virus, you need a virus. Here’s what they should do: show us 20 cell culture flasks with VeroE6 cells. Then one researcher randomly adds different fast growing viruses to half the flasks. Then other researchers, who are blinded to the intervention, measure cell counts at the start for each flask and then 1 and 2 days later on each of the 20 flasks. Throughout the process, all flasks are treated exactly the same: same temperature, same nutrients, same rotating mechanism, etc. Everything is identical except for the strain of virus added. Why didn’t they do that? You can’t cut corners in science like this with no virus and claim this is a game changing result showing viruses don’t cause CPE.

2. At no point did they do the any staining to see and verify CPE and look at the inclusion bodies and syncytia. Why didn’t they do that if they wanted to show CPE was happening?

3. At no time did they ever do any genetic sequencing on the results to verify any of the viruses they claimed were present were present. This is absolutely key if they are trying to make a point. Why didn’t they do this? You can do Sanger sequencing for as little as $200 and that’s considered the “gold standard.” Sanger can find “a needle in a huge haystack.” Are we to believe they lacked the $200 to do this critical step??? If the gene sequencing showed a match, this would be game changing. Are we to believe that they didn’t do the sequencing because none of them could come up with $200? They never explained this.

4. If you look CLOSELY at the images, for example SARS-Cov-2, you’ll see their “SARS-CoV-2” does NOT look like SARS-CoV-2. But they showed this on different slides so you could NOT make the comparison.

   

   They claim this is SARS-CoV-2. But it is in isolation (they zoom out later). The real SARS-CoV-2 will have LOTS of virions because viruses multiply rapidly inside a cell (the cell basically makes copy after copy until it dies). Also, there should be spikes surrounding the ENTIRE perimeter as in the real thing below. Nope, not there. And the density of the “black dots” inside the virion is NOT the same as the image below. HALO around the cell is black. Wrong color!

   EVEN WORSE: THE “HALO” of spike surrounding the real virus is light gray (below), but their “halo” is black. WHOOPS!!!!!!!!! The colors don’t match, yet they say these particles are identical to the CDC reference image. They are so anxious to “prove” their point that they ignore anything inconsistent with their story. Willful blindness. You want to believe you are right so much that you miss the details like the halo color doesn’t match up.
   
   This is why gene sequencing is so necessary. It’s objective. It can be replicated. It eliminates all doubt. They didn’t do it.

   

   This is the comparison image THEY chose from the CDC. Note how the spikes on the virus uniformly surround the cell. Note the high density of the black dots inside the virion. And note that there are lots of them in close proximity. The halo around the cell is a light gray. It is NOT black like in their image.

5. At no time did they ever point out that viral replication depends on the cell culture chosen. They said a “more robust cell line” would be a “better” test without any acknowledgement whatsoever that viral growth depends on the virus and the cell line. Certain viruses grow better in certain cell lines. No mention of that. If you want to replicate someone else’s work and prove it is wrong, you replicate it. You don’t change the cell line and you don’t change what you put into the cells.

6. At no time did they ever do any genetic sequencing on the sputum they added to verify that there were no viruses being added. This is basic stuff. If you never sequenced what you are adding, how do you know what it has? Did it have any viruses or bacteria? We have no clue since they never characterized the sample. They didn’t even think that was important.

7. NEVER did they mention that the overall shape (round) and size (on the very upper end of SARS-CoV-2) is NOT definitive and warned the audience that NO CONCLUSIONS should be drawn as to whether they found SARS-CoV-2 until they can confirm it with gene sequencing. That would have been the scientifically responsible thing to do. Nothing was said. Instead, this was hailed as a breakthrough.

8. Jamie hasn’t told us the E-value he’s requiring for a genome sequence match. You’d think a real scientist would put this in the protocol and let everyone know up front. Why is this being hidden from public view? Do you make it up after you see the results? Is that how good science works?

9. Jamie said he needed funds for a PCR machine. So they are ostensibly acknowledging that PCR is not a flawed technique because if it was, why would they waste funds on a machine whose results are random? I agree PCR isn’t a flawed process, but this may upset people to learn that leading virus debunkers have publicly acknowledged the value of PCR.

10. FBS is hormone that causes cell division as well as cell nutrients.DMEM provides nutrition. Is it possible that Jamie is overgrowing the cells leading to cell death?

11. Lack of any control on the inputs. This is really stunning how Jamie is ridiculing virology as poor science when Jamie’s experiment is the epitome of poor science. Jamie didn’t test any of the ingredients of his cell culture. He didn’t test the cells, he didn’t test the FBS, he didn’t test the

12. They aren’t publishing the methodology after announcing their results. But in science, at a minimum you publish in writing your methodology before or when you make your results publicly available so that others can evaluate it.

    

13. Jamie himself admits that his experiment is “half way” done (see imaage above). Why didn’t they warn people it isn’t confirmed until they do the gene sequencing to validate their claims? Why didn’t they point out that their SARS-CoV-2 virion doesn’t look like the CDC virion? Why weren’t they using the lack of similarity and telling people it’s possible they could be mistaken and to wait until the experiment was finished? Is it appropriate to declare “the end of virology” with an experiment where the scientist refuses to release the methodology and admits it is only “half way” done

    

14. Jamie thinks it is appropriate to declare “the end of virology” when there is no paper and no methodology available. Is this how science is supposed to be done? Announce your results, expect everyone to believe you, and then publish the paper and methodology later? Why does Jamie think his experiment is an exception to this, especially when he has no confirmation whatsoever he found any viruses he claimed to have found. Here’s a neutral view from Google AI on this topic:

    

15. Jamie is unfamiliar with how scientific grants work. For someone leading the science in a call the end of virology who isn’t familiar with the basics of how scientific research funding is done is extremely troubling. Is Jamie actually a scientist? What are his scientific credentials? The question is why did the “no virus” people choose someone to head this critically important research project who has never made a scientific grant proposal before? Was that the best person they could find to do the job? Why didn’t they choose someone who has written at least one grant proposal??

    

Alec needs to explain the images we do have of the virus

Please Alec, if the virus doesn’t exist, how do you explain all the images in this New York Times article from 2020?

How do you explain the fact we can image everything predicted by virology happening within a cell? Have you seen this paper? Tell us what we are seeing if it isn’t a virus.

We can see the virions and everything we observe in the images is consistent with virology. Everything. Including seeing the spike inside the cell and outside the cell.

What is NOT consistent?

Alec agreed to “consider” answering the questions I posed in my article if I wrote about his study

I delivered.

I can’t wait to hear his explanation for this section (or any other)!

But he couched his offer as “consider responding.”

So he can easily blow it off which he will because there is no way for him to explain how stress (or any other cause) can cause a very precise genomic sequence to be generated nearly identically in millions of people.

Burden of proof

If you want to topple an existing scientific discipline, the person doing the attack has the burden of proof.

The video isn’t a credible scientific attack for reasons I pointed out.

They could easily remedy the flaws in their process, but simply choose not to.

Jamie’s response to my article

To my astonishment, Jamie made this offer which I immediately accepted:

Jamie delivered on his offer a day later than stated. His rebuttal is posted here and I encourage you to read the whole thing.

I’ll respond to each of his points.

1. He starts off with a personal insult. This is simply not appropriate. If you are defending your science, personal attacks are inappropriate.

2. I was under the impression from watching the video that Jamie was the lead scientist in the project. Now he admits he’s just the project manager and that “ALL science” (which would include interpretation of the results), was done by accredited CROs.

   

   OK, my mistake. It wasn’t clear in the video. This implies that that each the accredited CROs made the independent scientific determinations that both CPE and SARS-CoV-2 were observed. Why didn’t Jamie show any proof of that? That’s the question everyone should be asking.

3. All the other points below this point are minor in comparison to the lack proof from any CRO confirming they observed CPE and observed SARS-CoV-2.

4. The Lanka trial determined measles was proven in SIX papers, but Lanka required SINGLE paper. This doesn’t mean measles doesn’t exist. It just means the proof required 6 papers. The decision Jamie imaged is 100% consistent with what I just said. It is misleading to make the statement “Stefan Lanka won where they had to admit that there was no scientific proof that the measles virus existed.” Had Jamie said, “Stefan Lanka won where they had to admit that there was no scientific proof in a single paper that the measles virus existed,” I would have had no problem with his statement.

5. CPE cannot be assessed based on a count of dead cells. A determination of CPE involves a number of features that must be present. Jamie never discloses any of this to his listeners. Why not? More importantly, Jamie never shows us any determination from any of the CROs that “All of the required features of CPE were observed.” If there was CPE, why not show us the expert confirmation of that from the CROs?

6. His quote from ASM, simply says the rate of cell death caused by CPE can be used to differentiate between virus types. Absolutely right! But the presence of cell death can mean a lot of things. Jamie fails to point out the distinction which I assume is because he’s unfamiliar with what each of the stages of CPE looks like. Again, Jamie failed to present any evidence from any CRO that explicitly states they observed CPE. Cell death and CPE are not the same. To diagnose CPE, you must observe all the aspects of CPE. CPE cannot be determined with just counting dead vs. alive cells. And CPE is observed even if you don’t starve the cells to death.

7. I pointed out a controlled experiment Jamie could have proved his point. You treat 20 vials exactly the same except you add viruses that cause CPE in different rates to the cells. If there is no differential cell death, that would be ground breaking. He attacked me for my suggestion. Whatever.

8. He says they had controls: sample without sputum (control) vs. sample with sputum (experiment). But his claim is that we can reproduce CPE without a virus. Fine. To prove that, he should compare the CPE observations (which is done under a microscope with staining) with a virus vs. without a virus and show that there was NO difference between samples that are otherwise identical. That is what science requires. He simply never did that experiment, nor does he want to.

9. Jamie agrees they didn’t stain the cells. That’s required to see required aspects of CPE. He then claims cell counts can be used to determine CPE. Not true. CPE has various stages, all of which must be observed to declare CPE. This is why none of the CROs said there was CPE. Do you really think if the CROs had determined CPE Jamie would NOT be talking about it?

10. The gold standard for diagnosing CPE is microscopic examination. Observing the cell morphology under a microscope in real-time allows visualization of the characteristic changes caused by the virus, such as rounding, syncytia, and inclusion bodies. This was never done. Relying on cell counts to declare CPE is present is simply very bad science.

11. More personal attacks: “And seemingly is so scientifically illiterate he thinks that you can have both bacterial contamination and Antibiotics in a culture.” This is an important revelation. Jamie claims that a few preselected antibiotics are adequate to kill all bacteria regardless of type. It simply doesn’t work that way. Perhaps Jamie isn’t aware that there are bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and that bacteria can mutate to resistant strains. But this is just a diversion and has nothing to do with their experiment.

12. Next, he attacks me for suggesting he should publish his methodology and should have done the gene sequencing before declaring that they produced SARS-CoV-2 from cell death.

13. Jamie also avoids answering my question “why didn’t you do the sequencing before you made your announcement?” It can’t be cost since they could have done one sequencing to determine SARS-CoV-2 for $200. You cannot claim “end of virology” if you haven’t spent $200 for a gene sequencing to validate your result. Jamie says that unlike the rest of the experiment, they wanted to do the gene sequencing in public.

    

    Nice. So it’s OK to do the entire rest of the experiment in private, and keep all the documents from the CRO secret, but the gene sequencing will be done in public. This did NOT prevent him from doing the gene sequencing before he went public. He could have had the CRO do it. After all, you never want to declare "the end of virology” unless you are damn sure you got it right. His excuse about doing it in public simply did not preclude him from having the CROs do it. The are NOT mutually exclusive experiments. They could have used one of the vials for this and then saved all the other vials for the “public” sequencing.

14. He says, “The ATCC GUARANTEE non contamination of Cell Lines through negatively testing the cells and Heat Inactivating the FBS.” That guarantee ends the moment you open up the tubes they send to you.

15. They said they are publishing their methods when they’ve finished all the experiments. That’s like publishing a clinical trial protocol when the study is done. You don’t do it that way because it allows for gaming. This is why, for example, the US government requires clinical trials to be registered before the trial starts so there is no gaming. Doing a “press release” on their findings without disclosing their methods at that time is not responsible science.

16. Jamie avoids addressing my points that the halo around the CDC image is grey and his “halo” is black. Black and grey are different colors and cannot be considered identical. He completely skips addressing this point. He says that the CDC images show SARS-CoV-2 has no spikes. Let me be clear: if there are no spikes, there are two possibilities: 1) you don’t know what spikes look like on an EM image or 2) it isn’t SARS-CoV-2. Look at the image below which is the image Jamie says doesn’t have spikes. See the grey halo around it. Those are the spikes.

    

Here is a computer visualization of a SARS-CoV-2 virion:

My advice to Jamie

If you want to get the attention of scientists, have the CRO do the gene sequencing and publish ALL the correspondence to/from the CRO including the test results on the genomic sequencing. Don’t keep it secret.

When you go public with your claim of “end of virology,” you disclose everything so your experiment can be REPLICATED by everyone INDEPENDENTLY using the methods you published.

That’s how science works.

Even better would be to have written up your protocol and had 5 or more labs (chosen at random from a list) all replicate your protocol and certify that SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequence was created de novo by following your protocol.

Then you can go public with “the end of virology.”

Today you have exactly zero labs that will publicly certify that CPE was replicated and/or that SARS-CoV-2 was produced.

Your opinion

I predict many people reading this article will be fooled by the video because they want to believe the video is legit science so they will ignore the questions raised in this article.

Those who voted “No” should find this very disturbing how very bad science can be used to fool people.

Summary

Flawed study that surprised no one. No independent variable (comparing virus vs. no virus CPE rates). No genomic sequencing to validate they produced SARS-CoV-2. No paper available describing the research, only a video. Not how it is done.

Will people be fooled by his video? Absolutely!