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An acquaintance of mine has been very adamant that viruses can't be caught and continues to link me things like this Ickonic video, where Jaymie Icke interviews Dr. Andrew Kaufman M.D. who claims:

I lived my whole life believing we can pass these infections from person to person [...] but interestingly all those times I learned it - especially in medical school - I was never presented with the series of experiments that actually proves that to be true.

[...]

There are almost no studies [that test that diseases spread from infected to healthy animals]. There are almost no studies like that. There are several studies more than a century ago, after the Spanish Flu, but since then I have not been able to find any studies to actually provide the scientific validation that we can actually have contagious diseases.

I'm very skeptical of a number of claims in this video, really, but I wanted to get a more thorough understanding of how we have come to our current understanding of epidemiology and viral pathogenesis. I have familiarized myself with some of the material in this microbiology textbook, but it's somewhat dated material and I wanted to seek input.

He expands on his points (at around 15:16) in ways which I think might conflate infection with disease, stating that the pre-existing presence of streptococcus in a person not experiencing symptoms means that the it is not the cause of the symptoms in another person. This seems fallacious to me, but I thought I'd see what others thought and if anyone knew outright of sufficient evidence while I dig around to improve my understanding.

Avery
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TheXenocide
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  • Does this answer your question? [Does the risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 decrease by washing hands?](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47220/does-the-risk-of-becoming-infected-with-covid-19-decrease-by-washing-hands) While that question was not terribly well titled, it was really about whether there's any proof that viral diseases get transmitted by passing... viruses from one person to another. – Fizz Apr 10 '20 at 08:11
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    And the reason why there are few experiments deliberately transmitting diseases between people is that most such experiments would be considered unethical. So most of the evidence is indeed indirect (e.g animal studies), but quite overwhelming. (Aside: even "live challenges" with pathogens from a dish are considered highly problematic in human studies https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/questions/23096/have-any-regulatory-agencies-announced-they-would-allow-live-covid-19-human-chal) – Fizz Apr 10 '20 at 08:57
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    I hate to say this, but the best *direct* evidence that pathogens pass diseases between people comes from highly unethical studies, of the kind conducted by the Nazis and the Japanese in WWII. The Nazis for example deliberately created tuberculosis epidemics in order to study them. Of course, extermination of the subjects was a desired "side effect" https://doi.org/10.1159/000481474 – Fizz Apr 10 '20 at 09:20
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    One reaon that there are relatively few studies proving this point (aside from the ones proven specific **subpoints** that are already given in anwers is that it has already (in the past) been soundly proven beyond any reasonable doubt. You will have a hard time finding any recent studies proving that gravity is a thing or establishing the speed of light, either. Claiming that he can't find **recent** studies is basically demanding from science that it needs to re-prove everything every generation or so. That's ridiculous. – Tom Apr 10 '20 at 11:59
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    Is this Jaymie Icke related to David Icke, the well-known insane conspiracy theorist? – DJClayworth Apr 10 '20 at 16:40
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    Does this guy try to dispute over a hundred years of research history on viruses? – aventurin Apr 13 '20 at 14:18
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    Excellent - the video has been taken down for violating YouTube rules. – Rory Alsop Apr 23 '20 at 22:36
  • @RoryAlsop: that was a bit [surprising](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/carlos-maza-and-stephen-crowder-show-youtube-has-one-rule.html). It took them at least a week though. I remember checking about week later after I reported it at it was still "on". Also David Icke's channel was deleted by Youtube. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52517797 – Fizz May 14 '20 at 10:36
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    @DJClayworth: Google says Jaymie Icke is David Icke's son, although that's in their new-style infobox that sometimes pops-up on the right on some searchers. Actually, from the former's youtube channel, which (unlike the latter's) hasn't been deleted: "Hi, my name is Jaymie Icke. I'm the youngest son of Author and Researcher David Icke." That's from the google cache. The actual channel of Jaymie has no contents now, but still exists as an empty shell. – Fizz May 14 '20 at 10:45
  • Pass this by the millions of people who are suffering from Post Polio Syndrome. – Daniel R Hicks Aug 26 '20 at 17:35

1 Answers1

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A qualified doctor challenging the Germ Theory of Disease after 1900? Wow.

This is just a smattering - just a random tasting - of the thousands - or perhaps millions - of studies showing that contagious diseases are contagious.

  • Dog to dog transmission of a novel influenza virus (H5N2) isolated from a canine

    To determine whether the novel H5N2 was transmitted among dogs, we conducted contact exposure and inoculation experiments. Susceptible dogs were housed in the room which the novel H5N2 infected dogs were housed in. As a result, the direct contact resulted in intraspecies transmission.

  • The guinea pig as a transmission model for human influenza viruses

    Moreover, influenza virus was transmitted from infected guinea pigs to noninfected guinea pigs housed in the same cage, an adjacent cage, and a cage placed 91 cm away. Our results demonstrate that influenza virus can pass between guinea pigs by means of droplet spread and thereby establish the suitability of the guinea pig as a model host for influenza virus transmission studies.

  • Influenza Virus Transmission Is Dependent on Relative Humidity and Temperature

    (Warning: same authors as above)

    We have shown that the transmission of a human strain of influenza virus between guinea pigs, a highly susceptible mammalian species, is acutely sensitive to conditions of RH and temperature.

  • Transmission of influenza A in human beings. The Lancet Infectious Diseases

    This is a systematic review of the literature about Influenza A. They identify dozens of studies related to how the virus is transmitted, including no fewer than six of the animal-to-animal studies that apparently haven't been done. [Confession: I haven't read these studies, but the systematic review didn't find that they contradicted the past 100 years of understanding of viruses, so I assume they don't have any staggering news in them.]

    List of studies

  • Aerosol Transmission of Rhinovirus Colds

    I wanted to include at least one example of the many that have used human volunteers. This one involved infected and healthy subjects playing cards for 12 hours, including some volunteers who were restrained from touching their faces during that time.

    These results suggest that contrary to current opinion, rhinovirus transmission, at least in adults, occurs chiefly by the aerosol route.

Aside: Kaufman makes several basic errors about how science works. His layman confusion about "theories", "laws" and "proof" of suggest he is not well read in science, despite his qualifications.

Oddthinking
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    btw, that video should be reported to Youtube as a scam. It is endangering the lives of other people and spreading dangerous misinformation. – Nzall Apr 10 '20 at 09:37
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    @Nzall: Go ahead! – Oddthinking Apr 10 '20 at 10:05
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    @Nzall this is the same youtube channel that has been promoting the 5G-Covid conspiracy theory https://www.gsmarena.com/youtube_is_cracking_down_on_conspiracy_videos_linking_5g_to_covid19-news-42524.php – Fizz Apr 10 '20 at 11:10
  • @Nzall: and whose interviews were sanction by Ofcom https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52228046 – Fizz Apr 10 '20 at 14:25
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    Also worth mentioning - Mythbusters sort of tackled this years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbQ9Kl9CqUU. It clearly shows that infected individuals can spread a virus with two assumptions they don't address - that mucus from an infected individual contains the pathogen, and that exposure to said pathogen can result in infection. The first is trivially easy to check, the second has mountains of supporting evidence (as mentioned in this answer). It's a great visual indicator of why hygiene and distancing are important to mitigate spread, though Adam may have been exaggeratedly handsy... – cpcodes Apr 10 '20 at 18:20
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    "...including no fewer than six of the animal-to-animal studies that apparently **haven't** been done." Is that a typo? Did you perhaps mean "**have** been done". Or am I just misunderstanding? – plasticinsect Apr 10 '20 at 22:43
  • @cpcodes: When I refer to the thousands/millions, that includes many studies that separate "when someone is infected, where do the pathogens end up" and "when the pathogens end up in the nose/mouth/eyes of an uninfected individual, do they get infected". However, to ensure I addressed the claim, I focussed only studies that showed end-to-end infections. I stuck to *viruses* although the claim was broader, about diseases, because I didn't want to get bogged down by non-contagious diseases. I also restricted to less than 70 yeats old. Despite restricting myself, there were plenty of examples. – Oddthinking Apr 10 '20 at 23:50
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    @plasticinsect: The word "apparently" is carrying a lot of weight here. It was some minor snark about the claim, which denied that such studies had been done. – Oddthinking Apr 10 '20 at 23:51
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    Ah. Now I get it. Sorry, my misunderstanding. – plasticinsect Apr 11 '20 at 00:30
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    Not that the post deserves to be treated fairly, but... to be fair, the discovery of _viruses_ is far more recent than the germ theory of disease. They flabbergasted plenty of great medical scientists back in the day. Of course, given that the post talks about "streptococcus" as if it were a virus, it's pretty obvious the guy is either completely ignorant, or simply a scammer. – Luaan Apr 11 '20 at 07:36
  • @Luann: The normal understanding is that coronaviruses is a subset of viruses is a subset of contagious diseases is a subset of infectious diseases is a subset of diseases, right? The precise wording of the claim appears to be NO diseases are contagious. In an attempt not be thrown by genuinely non-contagious diseases and to ensure we are not tackling a strawman, I helped limit the claim in the question to a much softer "no viruses are contagious". So streptococcus would fit in their original wording, but I avoided it, because addressing just viruses alone made my case stronger. – Oddthinking Apr 11 '20 at 12:13
  • More systematically: Death of the Rev. Dr. Peckwell In: The Times, 23. August 1787 & https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-27109-0_1 – LangLаngС Apr 11 '20 at 23:28
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    Might be worth including [this recent study](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.015347v1) in which cats were infected with SARS-CoV-2 and then placed next to healthy cats who then developed the infection. I am assuming the interest here is primarily due to Covid19, so a study demonstrating direct transmission of the virus causing that disease would be a useful reference. – terdon Apr 12 '20 at 13:46
  • @terdon: Looks like a good example of the sort of paper he denied in the claim, but it is so new, it could be argued that the claim was true at the time of recording. (It wasn't true, but in fairness to the claimant, he couldn't have known about this paper.) – Oddthinking Apr 12 '20 at 20:25
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    Fair point, yes. I just assumed that the question was prompted by covid in one way or another, so it would be useful to cite such a specific study. – terdon Apr 12 '20 at 23:15