BACTERIA AND VIRUSES

In 19th century France, two giants of science collided. One of them is now world-renowned—Louis Pasteur. The other, from whom Pasteur stole many of his best ideas, is now essentially forgotten—Pierre Bechamp.

One of the many areas in which Pasteur and Bechamp argued concerned what is today known as pleomorphism—the occurrence of more than one distinct form of an organism in a single life cycle. Bechamp contended that bacteria could change forms. A rod-shaped bacterium could become a spheroid, etc. Pasteur disagreed. In 1914, Madame Victor Henri of the Pasteur Institute confirmed that Bechamp was correct and Pasteur wrong.

But Bechamp went much further in his argument for pleomorphism. He contended that bacteria could 'devolve' into smaller, unseen forms—what he called microzyma. In other words, Bechamp developed—on the basis of a lifetime of research—a theory that micro­organisms could change their essential size as well as their shape, depending on the state of health of the organism in which the micro-organism lived. This directly contradicted what orthodox medical authorities have believed for most of the 20th century. Laboratory research in recent years has provided confirmation for Bechamp's notion.

This seemingly esoteric scientific squabble had ramifications far beyond academic institutions. The denial of pleomorphism was one of the cornerstones of 20th century medical research and cancer treatment An early 20th century acceptance of pleomorphism might have prevented millions of Americans from suffering and dying of cancer.

In a paper presented to the New York Academy of Sciences in 1969, Dr Virginia Livingston and Dr Eleanor Alexander-Jackson declared that a single cancer micro-organ­ism exists. They said that the reason the army of cancer researchers couldn't find it was because it changed form.  Livingston and Alexander-Jackson asserted:

"The organism has remained an unclassified mystery, due in part to its remarkable pleomorphism and its stimulation of other micro-organisms. Its various phases may resemble viruses, micrococci, diptheroids, bacilli, and fungi."