A review by Ira L. Goodman, MD, FACS

The Contagion Myth -Why Viruses are Not the Cause of Disease by Thomas Cowan, MD, and Sally Fallon Morell.
Skyhorse Publishing,
ISBN -13 9781510764620; c. 2020; 216 pages. $24.99 (hardcover)

When I first looked at this book’s cover, title, subtitle, and blurb that states the current coronavirus pandemic is not actually from a virus but from widespread 5G, I, like so many of my colleagues, dismissed it as absurd.

Then I read the book.

I must admit the arguments were convincing, the research was thorough, and the historical vignettes were enlightening. I came away wondering if this could actually be true.

This book is consistent with the counterintuitive ideas that Dr. Cowan has written about in his past books, including Human Heart, Cosmic Heart, in which he claims the heart is really not the pump it is made out to be; Cancer and the New Biology of Water,  in which he claims that the true cause of cancer is a specific kind of water; and others. I found all of these books very intriguing, so I immediately purchased his current book.

It was his best.

I was especially curious when I discovered it was banned on Amazon.com. That made me want to read it more, given the unprecedented censorship that exists today. The first amendment is apparently dead. I wish Amazon would list all the books they banned; those books are likely to have some good information. You can still get most of them from other sellers.

Cowan weaves the argument that viruses have never fulfilled Koch’s postulates, which are the following:

1. The infective agent should be found in all ill people or animals infected.
2. The infective agent should be isolated from all infected.
3. The infected agents should be cultured.
4. The agent should be re-isolated from others given the agent from the culture.

These postulates were modified by Rivers in 1937 to account for viruses, but neither Koch’s nor River’s postulates have been fulfilled for viruses to date. Modern virologists conveniently claim they are obsolete.

Even Louis Pasteur admitted on his deathbed and through his notes that it is the terrain and not the infective agent that is the most important. He admitted that he was never able to infect anyone with anything even though he tried frequently. Attempts to infect normal people with the influenza virus of 1918 from the secretions of ill people failed. Yes, this was done, according to Cowan.

Cowan goes on to claim that the main cause of the COVID syndrome we are all witnessing is the introduction of 5G radiation combined with other environmental toxins and toxicants. There is a very interesting summary of many past pandemics dating back to the Black Plague and explanations for each one based on environmental factors, including 5G and other widespread electrical smog like radar, electricity use, cell phones, and other electrical events like sunspots.   He points out that there was a massive 5g rollout in Wuhan in September of 2019 right before the “COVID” epidemic. Coincidence?

Also the new cruise ships that had epidemics of COVID were loaded with newly installed  5G and advertised as such. There are many unknowns about 5G and RFK, Jr, just filed a comprehensive lawsuit with 11,000 pages of supporting information against the FCC that has a hearing set for 1/25/21. 5G and the COVID vaccines are giant experiments as far as I can tell. They will both have dramatic consequences. Whether these consequences are good or bad remains to be seen.  

It would be impossible for me to list every interesting story, association, and conclusions drawn in this book that argued against the prevailing and accepted theory about the microbial causes of multiple diseases. Cowan claims that the so-called viral particles seen on electron microscopy are actually exosomes, that TB is not an infectious disease since there was never a successful attempt to infect a normal person with TB from a sick person’s secretions. As I said this book is counterintuitive. The theory that polio is actually caused by DDT, that rabies is not caused by dog bites, of course that AIDS is not caused by HIV are all described. There are numerous anecdotes and historical facts (like Germany’s 2016 court ruling that there is no evidence for the existence of the measles virus) that make the reader question long-held tenets of medicine, infectious disease, and what is actually going on now.

There are many holes in Cowan’s arguments, and I cannot say I agree with all of it; but it’s certainly worth thinking about and should not be censored. I hope he is wrong since if 5G is really the main cause of COVID-19 we are all doomed given the widespread future use of it. I would rather it be the virus, frankly. It would be easy enough to prove by shutting off all 5G in a city to see what this does to the case load. Good luck with getting anyone to cooperate and agree this is worth trying.

No, we would rather vaccinate every person on the planet, including pregnant women with an experimental vaccine, made with a method that has never been used, in warp speed. Cowan has a section on the COVID vaccines that, as expected, pans all of them. There has never been a successful vaccine against any of the other six coronaviruses, against HIV, Dengue fever, SARS, MERS, the Asian flu, or the Swine flu although attempts were made. I guess the current vaccines could be the first, but I would not bet on it. The efficacy of the annual flu vaccine is highly questionable, according to the Cochrane Collaboration. I would love to know what the manufacturers mean by “90% effective.” Effective in what way? Antibody production? Clinical disease? What about long-term side effects? What will it do to the fetus? All unknowns currently.  According to a recent article posted on mercola.com, there are many serious side effects from the COVID vaccines and that the overall side effect rate is 2.79% and counting.  The press release from Pfizer touting 95% effective rates is in terms of relative risk, not the absolute risk which is the most clinically significant. The absolute risk reduction of the vaccine is actually 1%, and even the relative risk reduction is 19-29%, not 95%. The choice to get the COVID vaccine appears to be governed by hope and fear—both emotions driven by the limbic system as opposed to the frontal lobe that governs rational thought.

Talking about the studies that “prove” COVID-19 is caused by the coronavirus, Cowan states:
These papers never show that all the people with COVID-19 had the same set of symptoms, they never purify any virus from the sick people; they never demonstrate the absence of the virus from normal people, and that they never show that the transmission of purified virus could make well people become sick. This is scientific fraud of the first order.

He goes on to say: “In short, no study has proven that coronavirus, or indeed any virus is contagious, nor has any study proven anything except that virologists are dangerous, misguided people and that hamster and monkey kidney rights people are not doing their jobs.”

There is a chapter on the testing scam, the perverse financial incentives to prove caseloads and death numbers. The PCR test with 40x amplification would likely be positive much more than clinically indicated, and he quotes Endelbrecht et al: “the COVID PCR tests are scientifically meaningless.” According to Cowen, “even the FDA and CDC admit that the PCR test cannot be used for diagnosis.”

When hospitals, and vaccine manufacturers get paid more for every death called COVID-related, these numbers can be suspicious. If someone comes into the hospital today in heart failure, for example, and dies, his death is likely recorded as a COVID death if the PCR test is positive with 40x amplification sometime during his long hospital stay. Yes, many people are dying of something every year (about 3.5 million/y all causes in the USA). Sometimes what is put on the death certificate is subjective. Could these numbers be influenced by the vaccine push?  There is no doubt there are many deaths from the COVID syndrome. What Cowan is questioning is the cause.

The assertions made in this book are based on scientific studies, not Cowan’s own theories. If I were willing to read each and every one of the hundreds of references cited, I might be able to figure out if Cowan is correct. There are many holes in his arguments since COVID appears obviously infectious; however, his conclusions that the real cause of this syndrome is a combination of bad water, bad food, environmental pollution, 5G, and emotions resonate with me as a functional medicine practitioner. I do think there is a real problem with animal viruses that migrate to humans as a result of large-scale factory farming (see Michael Greger’s book How to Survive a Pandemic); and unless this is resolved, I think we will see more frequent pandemics of every kind. The 1918 flu pandemic was exquisitely described by Barry in his book The Great Influenza, and its association with WW1 and the widespread use of radar and communication towers is noteworthy.

In summary, I think Cowan is worth listening to. Is he a visionary or something else?
Read his book and decide for yourself.