Experts questioned the validity of Ebola testing way back in 1977

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The experts were expressing grave doubts all the way back in 1977. Right at the beginning.

They were questioning the validity of standard tests used to diagnose Ebola - tests being the only way to say the virus is present in humans.

Of course, if the tests are unreliable, the whole premise of an epidemic caused by a single virus has no value. It's an unwarranted assumption.

At that point, you can look for illness and death stemming from a number of causes. And you're driven to the fact that, in Africa, large numbers of people have been dying for a very long time, for reasons that have nothing to do with germs:

Grinding poverty, war, starvation and severe malnutrition, contaminated water, pesticides, lack of basic sanitation, extreme overcrowding, stolen farm land, toxic medicines, and so on.

Not a viral epidemic.

The 1977 reference here is: "Ebola Virus Haemorrhagic Fever: Proceedings of an International Colloquium on Ebola Virus Infection and Other Haemorrhagic Fevers held in Antwerp, Belgium, 6-8 December, 1977."

This report is 280 pages long. It's well worth reading and studying, to see how the experts hem and haw, hedge their bets, and yet make damaging admissions:

For example, "It is impossible to consider the virological diagnosis of Ebola virus infection loose [apart] from the diagnosis of haemorrhagic fevers in general. The clinical picture of the disease indeed is too nonspecific to allow any hypothesis as to which virus may be responsible for any given case."

Boom.

Here is a particularly illuminating quote: "...it is becoming clear, to us at least, that the more work you do with the FA-Test [an antibody test for Ebola diagnosis] the more interesting, the more complicated and the more biologically sloppy the results become. I would urge very great caution in making any kind of final interpretation of what you have just heard [from other presenters]...I cannot explain how a Panamanian Indian can have antibodies to Ebola virus. I don't think these are real antibodies. Of course if these are not, it means that any others in a given serum [blood sample from a patient] may not be as well. It is clear that we must have an alternative and a much more specific method with which we can answer these questions. Several facts suggest endemicity of Ebola in Zaire...I'm beginning to believe that the virus may in fact be endemic in Zaire."

What do the last two sentences mean? They mean there is a significant chance that Ebola has been present in Zaire for a long, long time, and people have developed natural immunity to it, as they would to, say, measles or mumps.

Hardly the stuff of "outbreaks" and viral "hot zones" and recent "epidemics."

Here's an add-on, 18 years after the 1977 Colloquium in Belgium: of the 55 million people living in Zaire, 20% were estimated to have antibodies to the Ebola virus. In other words, they had developed natural immunity to Ebola. (Citation: Dietrich J., 1995. Der Tod aus dem Regenwald. Die Woche, 19 May, p26-27.") Again, not the stuff of an epidemic.

And finally, on a CDC website page titled, "Ebola (Ebola Virus Disease): Signs and Symptoms," there is this quote: "People who recover from Ebola infection develop antibodies that last for at least 10 years."

The meaning of this is ominous: such people, if they receive an antibody test for Ebola, even though they are now healthy, can be labeled "Ebola," and treated accordingly: shunned, quarantined, attacked.

Thanks to Felicia Popescu for her article, "The Ebola lie exposed! - a historical analysis." The article analyzes, in depth, the 1977 Colloquium on Ebola.