Claus D. Volko, M.D. on Symbiont Conversion Theory and Bacterial Reprogramming

Claus D. Volko, M.D. (born 1983) is an Austrian software engineer and medical scientist in Vienna. He holds degrees in medicine (M.D.), medical informatics (B.Sc.) and computational intelligence (M.Sc.). In the demoscene he is known as “Adok” and served as main editor of the electronic magazine Hugi. Volko formulated Symbiont Conversion Theory in 2018. He founded and leads the Prudentia High IQ Society, and joined Mensa in 2002. In 2018 he published “Volko Personality Patterns,” a Jungian-inspired extension of MBTI typology. In 2025 he posted “Reprogramming Bacteria for Symbiont Conversion: A Review” on Prudentia’s blog, and maintains Prudentia’s journal and blog.

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Claus D. Volko, M.D. about Symbiont Conversion Theory, drafted in 2018 and, Volko says, accepted only after years of rejections because it was theoretical. He describes a follow-up review on in-vivo bacterial reprogramming and proposes two costly experiments to test clinical feasibility. Volko also explains “Volko Personality Patterns,” a Jungian/MBTI extension that leaves one dichotomy open (INT*). He recalls mentor Dr. Uwe Rohr’s endocrine focus on isoflavones and immune support. Volko contrasts medicine’s rigidity with software’s tolerance and updates his Prudentia publishing work. He argues ambitious ideas need funding, not reflexive gatekeeping.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You invented Symbiont Conversion Theory. We profiled this in the previous high-IQ community series that ran for a decade or so. It is, in part, a response to the limits of “destroy and kill” therapies. What is the current status of the theory? What would move the theory from a generalized paradigm statement to more testable protocols for cancer or infectious disease treatment?

Claus D. Volko, M.D.: I invented Symbiont Conversion Theory and wrote a paper about it in 2018. While it was possible to immediately upload it to my personal homepage and link to it from places such as ResearchGate, it took me seven years (!) until I found a scientific journal that was ready to accept the paper. Most journals rejected the submission immediately and in one case it was rejected by the peer-review because the paper was just theoretical and did not contain any experimental results. In my opinion it is a shame that ideas with great potential are treated this way. Actually I would have expected a different reaction to my idea. But well, maybe I am too idealistic and in reality most people are different from myself.

I recently wrote a follow-up paper, "Bacterial Reprogramming for Symbiont Conversion: A Review". It is currently only available in the Prudentia blog and was printed by the ISPE in their journal Telicom. This paper investigates more of the literature where experiments that are relevant for symbiont conversion have already been conducted. Moreover, it proposes two more experiments that would be needed to prove that the concept would work in clinical practice. These experiments are quite expensive and I do not have the financial means to conduct them myself, otherwise I would have already done so. Hopefully somebody with sufficient resources will read my paper and perform the experiments.

Jacobsen: How are you extending Volko Personality Patterns? Is it being connected even more with contemporary empirical personality research in addition to the philosophico-Jungian constructs?

Volko: Volko Personality Patterns are based on Jungian personality theory. Basically it is an approach to improve the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI has 16 types based on four dichotomies. My idea is based on the fact that I myself score as an INTP on the MBTI, but only with a slight preference over INTJ. Therefore I thought that it would make sense to create new types (patterns) similar to these 16 types, but with the difference that one of the four dichotomies is open. So I myself would be an INT* according to Volko Personality Patterns, which I also called a Creative Theorist. My system is purely theoretical, it does not have an empirical basis. It is a logical extension of existing theories.

Jacobsen: You had work modeling on stress-induced steroid hormone cascades in severe mental disorders. How should knowledge of endocrine mechanisms reshape current treatment strategies in psychiatry?

Volko: My late friend and mentor Dr. Uwe Rohr was of the opinion that endocrinology was the actual basis of modern medicine. He once told me that the truth was that gynecological endocrinology was the king discipline, but if it happened that a doctor stated this in an interview for a magazine, he would be slaughtered by his colleagues as generally internal medicine is considered the king discipline of medicine. In fact many diseases are self-limiting and while the physician can prescribe drugs to speed up the healing process, it is actually the immune system of the patient that is primarily responsible for the healing. So modern medicine should focus on strengthening the immune system, and Uwe believed that this could be achieved by means of isoflavones as found in soy or red clover. The main hypothesis is that some hormones of the steroidal hormone cascade are stress hormones and others immunity hormones, and isoflavones are capable of converting stress hormones to immunity hormones. It is actually quite a miracle to my mind what effect these hormones can have. Uwe showed me photos of people with ugly wounds and what they looked like after two weeks of isoflavone consumption. I can only say, wow! And according to businessmen who sold fermented soy drinks to patients in America, these soy drinks also had very positive effects in cancer patients, as well as patients afflicted with severe mental diseases. So isoflavones seem to be a general method of curing disease, and this is due to their endocrinological working mechanism.

Jacobsen: You are a senior software engineer with a background in medical informatics and computational biology. After years in high-IQ societies, what is the direction of your work in this space?

Volko: I think that intelligence is a very important foundation for software engineering because programming requires the same way of thinking as solving tasks in intelligence tests. If you do not score well in an intelligence test, you will not become a good programmer. I have been in contact with software engineers since my teens and actually one of the reasons why I joined Mensa was that I also wanted to get to know intelligent people with other interests than programming (I already knew a lot of intelligent people, it was just that they were biased toward programming). I think that software engineering is a good career path for people with similar abilities and personality structure as myself. As I also have a medical degree I am able to compare the two fields. Medicine is far less tolerant than software engineering. If you are a bit different from society's expectations, you will have a harder time as a medical doctor than as a programmer. I also think that I have a far easier and healthier life than most scientists employed at universities or similar institutions.

Jacobsen: Looking at your ongoing editorial and demoscene-related activities, since Enzyklopädie der Diskmags, are you currently using these cultural projects to communicate on science, technology, and independent theorizing?

Volko: No. The demoscene is something of its own. My magazine Hugi focused on the demoscene in its contents and contained hardly any articles related to other topics. This is mainly because most demoscene members are not interested in anything but the scene. But of course, as I already indicated, this was too narrow for me in the long run. So nowadays I also maintain the blog of Prudentia society and contribute to the journals issued by other high intelligence societies, where I write about science, technology, political philosophy and other topics that interest me. The book "Enzyklopädie der Diskmags" actually seems to be too specialized even for people who are into the demoscene, which is why it was hardly sold. However, that also might be because there are some websites offering the download of PDF copies of it (of course, that is not quite legal, but I as the author have tolerated it so far).

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Claus.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.