Cara Santa Maria

speaker

5,033 appearances 14 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 5d ago

Cara Santa Maria’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 14 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 4.

Appearances

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The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe · The Skeptics Guide #827 - May 15 2021 podcast

One way that's like the most obvious way that viruses insert themselves into the genome is being a retrovirus. voice-verified

So retroviruses like HIV, we've talked about them before on the show, they actually utilize reverse transcription and they can actively insert themselves into the DNA of the host. voice-verified

We know that SARS-CoV-2 is not a retrovirus. voice-verified

So that is not the claim that's being made here. voice-verified

The claim is instead that it's using some other mechanism to do so. voice-verified

Now, we've got to look at this from... Not a new mechanism. voice-verified

They do propose a mechanism, which we'll get to. voice-verified

But we've got to look at this from two different sides. voice-verified

Number one, do we know if it's even happening? voice-verified

And number two, if it is happening, how is it happening? voice-verified

And right now, the answer to both of those questions is not firm. voice-verified

So let's kind of take a step back and understand that. voice-verified

These researchers are saying, we think it's happening. voice-verified

And if it is happening, this is why we think it's happening. voice-verified

And the reason they think it's happening, it seems like the crux of their arguments at the top, the observation they made that then led to the hypothesis testing, was that people who are getting tested, they're having PCR tests for COVID-19, are still testing positive. voice-verified

A small number of people are still testing positive long after they seem to have cleared the active infection. voice-verified

And so they were wondering, why is that happening? voice-verified

Let's start to dig deep into this. voice-verified

And they were able to show in the laboratory that in cell lines, that they were able to induce the virus or that they were able to get the virus into the human genome. voice-verified

So that is a big deal. voice-verified

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