How HIV Fails Koch's Postulates

Virologists can't get no (da da da)...satisfaction...(da da da)...even though they try and they try and they try and they try...

I often find inspiration for my writing through interactions on Twitter—or X, as it’s now known—particularly when these exchanges spark ideas or lead me to explore new topics. Sometimes, someone poses a challenge that requires me to dig deeper and investigate, leading to the discovery of valuable information that I feel compelled to analyze and share. These moments are the most rewarding, and I genuinely appreciate them, though they are unfortunately rare.

More often, I find myself engaging with individuals who not only lack a solid understanding of the topic at hand but also present arguments that can be easily refuted—even using their own sources. While I don't mind addressing these claims, it becomes tedious to repeatedly gather the same pieces of information. To save myself time and effort, I end up compiling my findings into articles. This way, when the same arguments inevitably resurface, I’ll have a comprehensive resource ready to go.

A recent example of this dynamic arose from a challenge I posed in response to a tweet by clinical psychologist Jonathan Stea on November 22, 2024. In his post, Jonathan claimed that denying HIV as the cause of AIDS is “one way to not make America healthy again,” using a quote from “anti-vax” proponent Robert Kennedy Jr. to support his point.

Noticing the implicit positive claim that HIV, rather than recreational drug use, is the cause of AIDS, I naturally requested the necessary scientific evidence that Jonathan must have relied upon to establish this chain of causation.

Unfortunately, having interacted with Mr. Stea before, I was not surprised by his response—or lack thereof. Despite his self-professed “expertise” in science and his vocal opposition to pseudoscience, his actions often contradict these principles. When challenged to substantiate the claims he makes in his posts, Mr. Stea consistently falls short. He neither provides credible evidence for his assertions nor engages in logical counterarguments. Instead, he resorts to highlighting comments for his followers to mock, punctuated by the occasional laughing emoji.

In this particular instance, rather than addressing my request for evidence, Jonathan deflected. He highlighted my comment and offered an irrelevant commentary about “germ theory denialism,” which failed to engage with the specific points I raised. By sidestepping his inability to substantiate his positive claim, he once again relied on his followers to “debate” on his behalf, avoiding direct accountability for his assertions.

While I anticipated numerous fallacious comments from his followers, I was surprised that no one directly challenged my point about the lack of scientific evidence, derived from the scientific method, supporting the claim that HIV causes AIDS. Instead, most responses—when not resorting to ad hominem attacks—focused on my inclusion of Koch's Postulates as a necessary criterion.

Developed by German bacteriologist Robert Koch in the late 19th century, these postulates outline four logical criteria necessary to establish that a microbe causes a specific disease. They emphasize association, isolation, causation, and re-isolation. While phrased slightly differently in various sources, the postulates are most commonly stated as follows:

1. The microorganism must be found in abundance in all cases of those suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy subjects.

2. The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased subject and grown in pure culture.

3. The cultured microorganism should cause the exact same disease when introduced into a healthy subject.

4. The microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.

Many of Mr. Stea's followers dismissed Koch's Postulates as outdated or not applicable to “viruses,” ignoring the fact that even though these logical principles were popularized by Robert Koch in the late 1800s, they remain timeless. The four postulates are rooted in pure logic, providing a framework for falsifiability and aligning seamlessly with the scientific method. When attempting to prove that any microbe causes a specific disease, Koch's Postulates are not just relevant—they are an essential extension of the scientific method. The two cannot be separated.

To address this argument, I recently reviewed information from organizations that actively support germ “theory” and virology, including the NIH, CDC, WHO, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and the American Association of Immunologists, among others. These sources confirm that evidence derived from the scientific method and satisfying Koch's Postulates is essential to definitively prove that any microbe causes disease. Thus, this objection to the inclusion of Koch's Postulates based on their age or relevance to “viruses” is entirely invalid.

Interestingly, while most of Mr. Stea's followers attempted—and failed—to dismiss Koch's Postulates as outdated or irrelevant to “viruses,” others contradicted these claims by asserting that the postulates had indeed been satisfied for HIV.

Some would supply editorials or articles claiming the postulates had been met, while others used AI-generated responses, such as those from Google searches or Grok—a generative AI chatbot accessing real-time information from X—to support their arguments.

However, despite their best efforts, they were ultimately unsuccessful in demonstrating that Koch's Postulates have been satisfied for HIV, as the available evidence fails outright from the very first step. In the interest of putting this debate to bed for good, let’s examine their claims and explore why their arguments are mistaken. It's time to show how HIV fails Koch's Postulates.