He calls it “The Golden Age of Virology,” a time for science to acknowledge that Koch’s Postulates1 published in 1884 and used to identify and associate bacteria, fungi and parasites with disease, cannot be used to associate diseases with viruses, which were not discovered until later.2 “Viruses do not act alone to cause disease,” says microbiologist Howard Urnovitz, founder and CEO of FBB Biomed.3 “Viruses interact with the unique set of ancestral genes that we inherit from our mothers and fathers, and we need to replace the idea of preventing disease by trying to achieve herd immunity with creating ways to personalize disease prevention.”
Howard Urnovitz, PhD, who has published research on virology and genomics for more than 40 years,4 has been a pioneer in forwarding the hypothesis that viruses only become harmful when they hijack host cells to replicate and interact with our bodies’ ancestral genes. He explains that “toxic exposures can modify ancestral genes we are born with, triggering dormant elements and increasing susceptibility to chronic inflammation, neurodegeneration and autoimmune disorders,” such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetic neuropathy, depression, schizophrenia and cancer.
A Personal Experience, A Career Devoted to Investigating the Causes of Chronic Disease
Motivated to become a scientist after his mother died at age 46 of breast cancer and his father and other members of his family were stricken with cancer in the 1970s, Dr. Urnovitz received his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1979 and has devoted his career to investigating the causes of chronic disease and developing biomarkers to help doctors diagnose and treat cancer and other chronic diseases. He built the first 10-minute test kit for AIDS, the first liquid biopsy for cancer, and now has developed a blood test to map an individual’s ancestral genes that will identify an individual’s susceptibility to the development of certain diseases. Currently available to researchers only, his “One Life, One Test” is in clinical studies with the goal of making it available to clinicians.5
Recently, Dr. Urnovitz wrote an open letter on Linkedin to the new DHHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. supporting the call for “unbiased science tracking the root causes of chronic diseases” and described his blood test “designed to provide real-time molecular insights into how environmental exposures and lifestyle factors contribute to disease.” He added, “This level of precision can help ensure that preventive measures are tailored to individual needs, reinforcing the power of genuinely unbiased science.”
From AIDS to Gulf War Syndrome: Speaking Out About Jumping Genes and Environmental Exposures That Increase Disease Risks
I met Howard Urnovitz in the mid-1990s while I was a member of the Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Forum, which held a series of public workshops on vaccine safety issues. I was urging public health officials to fund studies that investigate the biological mechanisms of vaccine injury and death to identify genetic and other biological high-risk factors making some children more vulnerable to harm from vaccination so their lives can be spared. At a 1996 IOM workshop I described my son’s neurological reaction to DPT vaccine in 1980 and said:
Parents believe that, too often, research scientists forget that behind every vaccine adverse event statistic, there is a real child and a real family who have been hurt just as surely as if polio or diphtheria had visited that house and claimed a family member as a morbidity or mortality disease statistic. Why is this important, you may ask, from a scientific perspective? It is important because when the human face is removed, it makes it much easier for the researcher designing and conducting vaccine studies to treat children like a genetically homogeneous group of cattle instead of individual children with a unique genetic heritage subject to unique environmental co-factors. When you forget the human face, it is much easier to stand behind that invisible wall separating science from public policy and be reluctant to design the kinds of studies that will investigate what is really happening to the tens of thousands of babies being born every year who are eventually developing immune and neurological dysfunction manifested by a wide range of symptoms ranging from medication resistant seizure disorders to learning disabilities to autism to chronic fatigue.6
At that time, Dr. Urnovitz was already speaking out about genetic factors in the expression of disease and endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), which are also called retrotransposons or “jumping genes” found in animals and humans that can easily recombine with fragments of other viruses and form new hybrid viruses called chimeras.7 At the 1996 Eighth Annual Houston Conference on AIDS, which I attended, he gave a presentation expressing concerns about the potential risks of HIV vaccines that were being developed. Using the post-polio syndrome as a disease model, he explained the biological mechanism by which jumping genes from viral fragments can get into the wrong tissues and cause havoc in the body.
He pointed out that nearly two million Americans were infected with the wild polio virus in the 1940s and 1950s and a number of them went on to experience post-polio syndrome8 that is marked by immune and brain dysfunction like muscle weakness, ADHD, memory loss, sleep disorders, chronic fatigue, and other health problems that took 20 to 40 years to develop. He hypothesized that RNA from polio virus fragments were archived into the DNA in the wrong tissues, which also could have occurred with some recipients of the live oral polio vaccine (OPV).
Dr. Urnovitz was one of the first scientists to speak out and publish research about soldiers suffering with Gulf War Syndrome after being given anthrax9 10 and 16 other viral and bacterial vaccines, as well as the nerve agent drug pyridostigmine bromide,11 before they were deployed and exposed to chemical toxins in the Middle East war zone.12 In 1999 Dr. Urnovitz submitted testimony to Congress on the genetic basis of vaccine associated human cancers, Gulf War Syndrome, multiple sclerosis and AIDS. He said:
The human body retains a genetic memory of foreign substances to which it has been exposed, including viral and bacterial vaccines. Each individual responds to foreign substances differently, based on his or her own unique genetic background and there appears to be a limit on how much foreign material to which the human body can be exposed before some level of genetic damage occurs and a chronic disease initiates… These substances range from infectious agents, both natural and vaccine-related; pesticides, herbicides, petroleum byproducts and other synthetic chemical hazards; and physical hazard such as radiation.13
The next year, in 2000, he testified in Congress on a GAO Report on Gulf War illnesses,14 and again emphasized how genes interact with environmental exposures.
It would appear that the human body has a mechanism for confronting toxic exposures. We all know that we are given our physical characteristics from genetic material or genes; one set of genes received from each parent. What we learned by simultaneously studying GWS, cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis is that the genes have the ability to “reshuffle” and create new genes. We reason that these new genes are used to adapt to the toxic environment in which we live. It seems that there are confounding events that turns this reshuffling mechanism from a normal protective process to a disease state. One of the next phases in our research plan is to determine what events trigger these reshuffled genes to convert from helpful to harmful.15
A More Enlightened Approach: More Precise and Personalized Disease Prevention
Today, Dr. Urnovitz continues to challenge entrenched beliefs about viruses and disease to pave the way for a more enlightened approach to maintaining health that moves way from the one-size-fits-all approach and toward more precise and personalized disease prevention and treatment solutions. Recently he said:
The real challenge isn’t a lack of understanding but the failure of public health leadership to apply existing insights effectively. For instance, research has shown how environmental triggers like toxins can awaken dormant genetic elements, increasing susceptibility to diseases such as H5N1, COVID-19 and chronic conditions. Yet these insights have been routinely ignored, underfunded and dismissed in favor of high-risk experiments that add little practical value and high safety risks.
Instead of pouring resources into controversial gain-of-function studies, shouldn’t we ask why proven concepts like genetic susceptibility and dormant gene activation aren’t at the forefront of public health strategies? The issue isn’t about discovering new risks, it’s about recognizing and leveraging our knowledge to create smarter, safer and more effective interventions.
Dr. Urnovitz will soon publish an e-book on how industrialization is rewriting our DNA and its consequences. For more information about the work of a man ahead of his time, visit https://www.fbbbio.com/medical-research or join him on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/howard-urnovitz
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Click here to view References:1 Libretext Biology. Koch’s Postulates.
2 Libretext Biology. Discovery and Origin of Viruses.
3 FBB Biomed. The Golden Age of Virology.
4 ResearchGate. Howard Urnovitz, PhD. Publications. Accessed March 2025.
5 FBB Biomed. One Life, One Test.
6 Fisher BL. Perspective from Parents: Vaccine Safety Research Needs. Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Workshop Apr. 1, 1996.
7 Urnovitz HB, Murphy WH. Human Endogenous Retroviruses: Nature, Occurrence, and Clinical Implications in Human Disease. Clinical Microbiology Reviews 1996.
8 Mayo Clinic. Post-polio syndrome. May 23, 2022.
9 Roos R. GAO: Military anthrax shots caused many reactions, prompted some pilots to quit. CIDRAP Nov. 8, 2002.
10 Parpia R, Fisher BL. The Anthrax Vaccine and Gulf War Illness. The Vaccine Reaction Apr. 30, 2017.
11 Keeler JR, Hurst CG, Dunn MA. Pyridostigmine used as a nerve agent pretreatment under wartime conditions. JAMA 1991; 266(5): 693-695.
12 Urnovitz HB, Tuite JJ, Higashida JM, Murphy WH. RNAs in the Sera of Persian Gulf War Veterans Have Segments Homologus to Chromosome 22q11.2. Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology 1999.
13 Urnovitz HB. Written testimony of Dr. Howard Urnovitz. U.S. House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. Aug. 3, 1999.
14 Gulf War Illnesses: Basic Questions Unanswered. Testimony of Kwai-Cheung Chan, US General Accounting Office, before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veteran’s Affairs and International Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform. Feb. 2, 2000.
15 Testimony of Howard Urnovitz, PhD before Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans’ Affairs and International Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform. Feb. 2, 2000. Pgs. 133-145.
9 Responses
Finally, some common sense is being given a voice in our government 👏🏼 👍🏻 👌
Brilliant and BRAVE! I feel that this is the time to push this hypothesis forward! As a chiropractor we were engrained with the knowledge that the body needs to have proper nerve connectivity and nutrition to fight disease. Turns it that was right! Neuro immodulation is how the nervous system upregulates the body for fighting an infection. None of my children have been vaccinated! A rare occurrence now a days. I ‘m praying that they don’t vaccinate their children! This will help to give our human race an advantage on life!
Thank you Dr. for keeping up the fight for applicable information that helps everyone both to prevent and treat chronic disease roots. This research is decades in the making but a different paradigm from the broken Koch’s application to viruses.
Nice try. No “Virus” has ever been found in living tissue. Prove me wrong.
100%. They can’t prove that “viruses” exist let alone cause disease, so they have to concoct another wild fantasy.
Another excellent piece. Thank you.
Article quote: At that time, Dr. Urnovitz was already speaking out about genetic factors in the expression of disease and endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), which are also called retrotransposons or “jumping genes” found in animals and humans that can easily recombine with fragments of other viruses and form new hybrid viruses called chimeras. / Um…. Yeah. We’ve been talking about this for a long time in relation to genetically modified food and crispr9 tech. Spontaneous transmutagenic cross trait passover. You are what you eat. Same concept just different scope of consideration. We are all products of our environment. Every bit of environmental exposure has real world effects in one form or another. Bio accumulation. We can not even begin to fathom the long term effects of these real time experiments with nature and genomes. But you can bet we’ll see some unintended consequences which may be beyond frightening in the generations to come.
Article quote: He hypothesized that RNA from polio virus fragments were archived into the DNA in the wrong tissues, which also could have occurred with some recipients of the live oral polio vaccine (OPV). / Yes. But like many other researchers in the field he’s holding onto certain constructs which are still to this day being challenged. Could the observation also be related to the theory that polio ran rapid because at the time governments were spraying DDT everywhere? Is polio at it’s heart a by product of human beings exposure to synthetic toxins and chemicals and a similar health condition which we diagnose as polio can become expressed through a broad range of different chemicals? Again, along the same line of consideration of environmental exposure.
Article quote: The human body retains a genetic memory of foreign substances to which it has been exposed, including viral and bacterial vaccines. & It seems that there are confounding events that turns this reshuffling mechanism from a normal protective process to a disease state. One of the next phases in our research plan is to determine what events trigger these reshuffled genes to convert from helpful to harmful.
Response: Really like this guy. He’s talking in the language of logical well research science rather than what has now evolved into a constant stream of corporate dogma and contradictory faux-scientific informational streams. But let me pose a simple question before writing out a longer more detailed account of the matter. Does it matter what gene type you have if you drank a full glass of glyphosate?
He’s focused on the genes, as if understanding these complex mechanisms will somehow lead to medical break throughs that will correct all the problems. At this point I’m going to respectfully disagree. His postulations are almost certainly true, but the time and energy expense to get there, the research delays, humanity does not have this much time available to solve these issues. Genetic damage which will eventually present in downstream lineage as increasing mutation, deformity, and susceptibility to disease is happening in real time right now and needs to be answered. This can be answered in a much shorter time period than it will take to accomplish this research. He’s doing good work and should continue but we the people collectively need immediate solutions.
Let’s recap and summarize the arrays of environmental exposures which are contributing to the ‘chronic health issue epidemic.’ Toxins in foods. Dangerous additives. Synthetic chemicals. Pesticides. That was covered in the research. What about dangerous frequencies from wireless technology, smart devices, blue tooth, cellular, the pending complete species destroying issues with starlink and satellites irradiating everything on the planet from the lower atmosphere, so we can have ‘online access anywhere at all times’.
Let’s talk about toxins injected directly to the blood with what is now a pervasive firmly entrenched belief that everyone and everything needs vaccinated at all times forever to no end. Move down the line to forever chemicals, fire retardants, micro particulates that are inescapable in modern living. Such as carpet, polyester, various petroleum by products which is due to an over abundance of downstream material capture when all humans really needed this substance for was heat and energy primarily to generate inertia to operate modern machinery. Plastics. Synthetics. Volatile organic compounds offgassing from modern manufacturing techniques. Acid rain and chemtrails, genetic engineering programs which push barium and aluminum micro particulates on every surface inch of the planet, soon to cause catastrophic weather and oceanic effects. Basically everything ‘modern’.
The quickening is here. The exponentially increasing consequences already apparent. If people would but dare to look. So yes, the good Dr Urnovitz appears to be on the right track with some really ingenuous long term research goals that will most certainly yield incredible break throughs. But we don’t need that right now. What we need right now as a human species is to get a better handle on the runaway corporations, captured regulatory agencies, and legalese behemoth problems which have captured governments and societies around the world into a false paradigm that we can regulate and tax ourselves out of these problems.
We need recognition of these problems and immediate accountability in order to disincentivise the ongoing perverse incentives which perpetuate the issues. Mainly regulatory capture by big corporations whom all in unison deny accountability and blame the other industries. Humans are barraged on all sides by these damaging environmental devices, we’re caught in a time loop where no further progress to recovering health can be made, because the pace of external damage exposure clearly exceeds the peoples ability to withstand and heal compared to the pace of exposure.
They’re putting up these satellites which will eventually destroy all insects on the planet and cause chain reactions of devastating consequences to food supply and life on the planet at an accelerated pace. Soon more corporations will be in on the game and we’ll reach a tipping point of no return. They’re spraying untold volumes of billions of metric tons of chemicals which include forever chemicals through both the material recapture and manufacturing phase, spraying that on every inch of the planet. Be that through geo engineering or regular agricultural activity, also with corporate waste streams due to ongoing tolerance and demand for lower priced synthetic material products, the scale and scope of this environmental catastrophe is astonishing. How many trillions and trillions, quadrillions, quintillion micro particulates and chemicals are humans being exposed to with vaccinations and general environmental exposure in our own homes, in their own foods?
So overwhelming. Yet we have a clear road map to success and mitigation of the problem right in front of us. It’s called the past. History. Preference for natural material. Localized production using existing materials on hand. Classic architecture using stone and wood instead of synthetics. Traditional homeopathic medicine rather than allopathic. Herbs. Spices. Organic farming. Self sustainability. A move away from the corporate central model needs to happen immediately.
If you are reading this message, you are the resistance. Do your part right now, make small changes, and continue to apply those in your own life and lead by example. Better living without chemicals. Stop purchasing items if they come in plastic or try to limit your plastic consumption as plastic recycling is essentially a myth and will never be the solution. Take a steel cup to the gas station to get your next soda pop. Switch to steel ice cube trays. Only reach for food condiments if they are packed in glass not plastic. Pay for the real hardwood flooring and look with disdain and objection to synthetic composites and carpet. Check your chemical footprint with your cleaning products. Demand foods that do not ‘contain bio engineered ingredients’, support the non gmo labeling campaign and substitute every last food product possible for something more wholesome with less chemicals and additives. Switch back to wired devices in your home, get the wireless interconnected devices away from your self and your family immediately. Grow your own garden, start small, do what you can, substitute at least one food item. Buy real wooden furniture. Learn to recognize all these influences and materials in their life for what they are. They are either safe and come entirely from nature. Or they are unsafe, products of modern man.
That’s only half the solution. The rest will need to be accomplished by downsizing government and returning to free market principals, so the central model of globalization and monopolization can be abolished. So we can escape the regulatory capture where we do not have adequate free market choices to build the better planet we all want to live in. Central planning never works. We can’t make these corporations stop, because they’re using our own energy against us. Your tax dollars hard at work. We need to downsize the government and seek a decentralized model if we want long term solutions to ‘the chronic health issue epidemic’.
Everyone is in their bubble and so few are grasping the big picture here. That’s the problem, the root of the issue. Look no further than history for solutions. We used to make all this work without all these dangerous substances and inventions, and we need a return to a less modern lifestyle with haste. Technology is awesome. We don’t need to reject technology. We just need safer more responsible applications. How is it that humans are intelligent enough to postulate incredible science like the topic of this article, yet apparently not intelligent enough to recognize why the need for that science presented in the first place? Because if we did not have all these health issues, would those doctors even be looking at this type of research?
A great place to start? Decentralization. Preference for organic. Preference for real sustainable natural materials, reject synthetics. And most importantly; Fines based on income so that we can break up corporate monopolies and they can no longer run business as usual causing exponential harm and write it off as a business expense, buy into their own self affirming regulatory rules.
Thanks for reading the Vaccine Reaction news site and blogs. Another simply excellent thought provoking news article. Thank you Barbara. The green energy and environmental protection movements came close to the mark but were always destined to fail. Because they did not deal with the core issue of centralization and captured regulatory structures, so as could have been predicted, the movements and products behind them were immediately co opted by competing corporations and special interests.
Check this website out. Simply fascinating. ‘Modern technology’… We have to look to the past to gain a better perspective on the present. We could all have energy capture devices in our homes, fully recyclable metallurgical based solar anyone could manufacture or repair at home, sustainable sewage and material waste recycling systems. We could be heating our homes and living well without the need for these environmental health damaging exposures. They were growing oranges in siberia two hundred years ago with trench gardening. Stone buildings which would last a thousand years instead of a hundred. Think of the possibilities. And in the end, we come full circle to realize our own inventions and tolerance of centralization has not resulted in the miraculous future generations before us dreamed of, but rather has been so poorly implemented and directed, we are all negatively effected by these matters, and now everyone is sick or will be sick with devastating disease in their lifetime. How did we get here? Please remember this one important slogan; central planning never works. Thank you.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/page/2/
I’m sorry but Kochs postulates are not irrelevant unless, you’re a biogenetic opportunist who’d rather make up disease causes that can never be verified or replicated…..hmm a Robert Gallo comes to mind. Personalized disease protection is a hoax.The cells have 1,000’s of repair genes that keep mutations from surviving and otherwise fix damaged DNA. RNA retrovirises aren’t pathogenic. There are millions traveling constantly throughout our bodies called associated, passenger or messenger viruses but they are not toxic pathogens like strong double strand DNA virus that cause herpes, warts or chicken pox. They are rather code carriers, some molecular cell biologists call exozomes. True, toxins can cause chromosomal chaos and scrambling of DNA which can lead to cancer if the exposures occur persistently and long enough. But RNA causing disease? No! PCR tests cause disease with millions of false positives! Polio, if one reads the history will see in books like A Moth in the Iron Lung..
or Jim Wests book researching toxins as the likely cause…..that polio, a disease/affliction of metal workers mostly, was a stunt, a hype job using a vaccine that could have had fly crap in it as much as an RNA gut “virus” that no one at the time and still to this day can explain how it jumps to the spinal chord.
Where are this man’s papers and studies published? It seems he’s a traveling salesman with no real proof of causation. We must stay clear of these biogenetic barkers who won’t admit that none of their genetic interventions have worked or will ever work. Gene editing is not viable and requires massive immune suppressive medication to slightly get foreign proteins to be accepted….if at all.
It’s too bad this knowledge and wisdom of our health wasn’t studied and implemented 70 or 80 years ago! Now we have had at east 4 or 5 generations of people getting sicker and sicker from the bad science nonsense and Big Pharma (which only serves to keep us sick)!
Today, vaccines have become the problem. Big bucks followed by the threat of more vaccine mandates, not just bypassing the human body’s immune system, but destroying that system will only cause more deaths. Also, remember that vaccinations are supposed to PREVENT disease, not treat it. Remember how the Biden admin. was fully behind the push to force people to get the Covid jab even if people already had Covid. The jab was being used as a treatment, not a preventative! And if you already had Covid, and beat it, your immune system had done its job, making any treatment pointless. Use the immune system that the Biblical God gave you and stay away from vaccine poisons.