Written by Helena Windsor
In his open letter to Sajid Javid and Grant Schapps, published here on July 9th , Anthony Webber made a number of derogatory claims about the use of PCR tests to detect SARS Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Very few ordinary members of the public, journalists, or even political commentators are likely to be familiar with the PCR test, let alone have actually carried out these tests in a laboratory. So just what is a ‘PCR Test’?
It is nearly seventy years since James Watson and Francis Crick worked out the structure of DNA from Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray diffraction photographs. Read Watson’s book, The Double Helix, about the events leading up to it, if you haven’t already. Spoiler alert, he fluffs his maths and is called out by Franklin. And a trigger warning for younger readers, 1950s attitudes to women, especially clever women in science, are appalling.
DNA consists of four nucleotides, or bases, adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine, with a sugar and phosphate backbone. When adenine bonds to thymine and cytosine to guanine on another strand they form the familiar helical structure of double-stranded DNA. So here is the secret dance of life – a single strand of DNA is the template for the second strand; an enzyme, called DNA polymerase adds extra bases according to the code of the base pairs – adenine to thymine and cytosine to guanine. The dance carries on, in each and every cell, as the codes embedded in that nucleic acid genome generate a multitude of different Messenger RNA strands, the templates used by ribosomes to make proteins.
Watson and Crick had liberated the genie from the bottle; scientific work with DNA expanded and expanded. In 1983, Kary Mullis, a chemist working for Cetus Corporation in California, had a light bulb moment whilst driving to his country cabin with his girlfriend. Could he tag for replication a desired DNA sequence and copy it using DNA polymerase? This would allow rapid amplification of a small stretch of DNA via repeated heating and cooling cycles. When double stranded DNA is heated, the strands separate, Mullis’ idea was to introduce targeted, short complementary sections to anneal, or bind to the separated strands during cooling, then extend the sequence with the polymerase enzyme.
In 1986, a colleague at Cetus, Randall Saiki, working on the new technique, used the enzyme from Themophilus aquaticus (Taq) a bacterium found in hot springs. Taq polymerase is heat resistant and only needs to be added to the reaction once. This modification revolutionized biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, medicine, and forensics, giving scientists the ability to amplify DNA of a specific sequence, starting from a few simple chemicals and some temperature changes. Mullis was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993.
Claims that Mullis has said that PCR – the Polymerase Chain Reaction, should not be used for detection of infectious disease, or infectious viruses, have circulated widely, along with a comment that he once made about HIV, “If they could find this virus in you at all, with PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody.” The latter remark has been widely abused to suggest PCR testing for Covid is fake. Well, yes, with the right primers for whatever gene or disease agent you are seeking, his statement is true, without them, you won’t. We can’t ask Mullis sadly, as he died in early 2019, but one thing we can be sure of, he would have known by then that PCR was the detection method of choice in clinical and veterinary diagnostic laboratories worldwide. This is particularly true for virus infections. Whereas bacteria can be visualised with special stains using a light microscope and many grow up in a day or two, viruses must be grown in cell cultures and need an electron microscope to be seen.
When Zhang Yongzhen, a Chinese virologist and professor at Fudan University, sequenced and published the genome of SARS CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, in early January 2020, it was inevitable that PCR would become the dominant method for detection. Once the genome sequence was known, a specific PCR test could be developed and shared around the world far more quickly than alternative methods. The lateral flow and laboratory run equivalent tests, need the laboratory-based generation of antibodies to the target, which are then usually tagged to something that gives a colour when the two bind (those red lines on your LFT).
A conventional PCR requires the sample to be sent to a lab for processing, for this reason, I personally believe that more rapid, point of use or care tests should supersede PCR for Covid testing.
On Helenas side note , even I find 1950 attitudes to women in general-not only smart scientists- appalling.
Eg Hemingway on women is so bad I can only laugh .
There is not much on Mrs T and her early experience in industry.
So much of the Control by Covid is based on a False Fear – We now know by looking at the results in different territories that the harshness of the Mask and Lockdown mandates make no difference to the outcome of infection but the harsher they are the greater damage to economy, wellbeing and suicide – We now know that in the ‘pandemic’ lost life years are the lowest for 11 years – And it is a pandemic where most have to be tested to even know they are ill so mild are the symptoms – And when death is achieved it averages two years longer than life expectancy – Yet this non event is being used to usher in unprecedented authoritarian control – It is clear those in the Pyramid of Power and Fraudulent Fortune built under the banner of Covid never want to see it dismantled because they are intoxicated and addicted to a new and exciting power and ego they are enjoying so much – Also if the Drug companies can get Vaccine Passports established then top ups and other diseases can be added continuously to create an entire new industry where government pays for the research and grant legal immunity and the leisure and travel industry pay for enforcement – We have created and will increasingly create more suffering by our reaction to the virus than from the virus itself.
So true Lindsay and Bunter and friends will use it until we manage to stop them.
In fact it is worse than anything we have experienced in my lifetime and worthy of something akin to the Nuremberg Trials.
Helena. I understand that you find your science fascinating. You find the molecular dance of life amazing.
Actually I find the Evolution of Life on Planet Earth rather an interesting subject, without going into the intricate detail that you study. I also wonder whether there might be other, quite different forms of life on other planets, maybe outside our solar system.
(It’s life Jim but not as we know it !)
However, I wonder whether you may be guilty of not seeing the wood for the trees.
For one thing, you must admit that life, including human life and including, I don’t know how many millions of viruses, has been going on for rather a long time without us messing about with it. Homo Sapiens is still here. We have survived.
Is it the case that the PCR test has been criticised on the grounds that it depends on the right number of cycles being used for accuracy? Is it the PCR test that at a high enough number of cycles will detect viral particles that have already been dealt with by the innate immune system?
My understanding is that those were the grounds for claims that the test was giving false positives.
So far as I can see you have not dealt with those issues.
Add to that, the point I made before, that we have coexisted with viruses for a very long time. Personally I believe there was never any justification for locking us ALL up, for making us ALL wear masks or for insisting we ALL get vaccinated.
The Great Barrington Declaration said the Vulnerable should be OFFERED protection. That is, if THEY wanted it and otherwise the virus should be allowed to become endemic. (Like all the other viruses floating around.)
As I promised Jim earlier – this is the first part of two. Next instalment is The Forty Five Steps – should tell you what you need to know about the topic.
Yes – PCR only detects nucleic acid, it does not tell you if the whole organism is present and viable. In that respect the lateral flow tests are better. (BTW – the so called false positives from orange juice & coke used by pupils to bunk off school – those helpfully posted on SM don’t look + to me, maybe a weak reaction, which anyone sensible would repeat.) That’s covered too.
Meanwhile much schoolboy tittering in the redtops at the weekend about ‘guffs’ spreading Covid! It was known last year that wastewater could be used to track infections. No answer to any questions I have raised as to was this from fragments or could viable virus be cultured. Big public health implications. I don’t think any Gvt anywhere will come out of this well.
There was an instance quite a while ago, where a distraught father could not get his severely disabled son back into care after a period at home, without him taking a PCR test. It was impossible to get a sample from his son, so he cheated. He sent two samples from himself, labelling one as his son’s. His came back negative; his son’s, his own second sample, came back positive.
President Magufili of Tanzania would not have the jabs in his country. Covert PCR tests he arranged on fruits, animals and chicken wings came back positive. For his stand he died of ‘heart complications’; of course he did.
An ever growing body of principled eminent scientific and medical opinion, totally ignored by the media, has repeatedly explained why the PCR test is grossly misleading. I won’t rehash the facts here. As a knowledgeable readership you probably know them anyway.
Reiner Fuellmich is driving legal action to show that there never was a corona pandemic, only a PCR-test pandemic.
PCR-test results are all based on the German Drosten test, adopted on the basis of fraudulent claims.
Way back on July 13th 2020, the United States CDC, said, on page 38 of one of its publications on the coronavirus and the PCR tests:
“Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019 nCOV [novel coronavirus] is the causative agent for clinical symptoms.
“The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019 nCOV infection.
“This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.”
How long will it take Dr Reiner Fuellmich to bring his cases to court? The speed with which our Billy Bunter and his Junta are going with their dystopian plans it will be too late for us. Flyer raised hair raising developments in House of Lords in a post in a different article in ID today. We are running out of time.
“Billy Bunter and his Junta”. I like it; it suits them.
Very interesting Helena. You may want to join this event.
You are now registered for: In conversation with Professor Neil Ferguson – the next phase of the Covid-19 crisis. The event will take place on Monday 6 September from 13:00 – 14:00
The live-stream link will be sent to you closer to the date of the event and it will also appear on our website.
Lawks – could I even be polite to Fergs and his models? Have I forgotten Foot & Mouth? (ans No!) Why is he still pontificating?
Nothing to disagree with here, but additional points need to be made:
The number of amplification cycles is critical. As a layman i wouldn’t know, but it is said by many more knowledgeable than I that anything above 35 cycles will be unlikely to indicate any actual infection with a live virus.
Indeed the CDC has stipulated that no more than 28 cycles should be used for vaccinated subjects!
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/downloads/Information-for-laboratories-COVID-vaccine-breakthrough-case-investigation.pdf (download). Skewing of the results? Why not the same number of cycles for all subjects?
And now the CDC is changing its assays from 31st Dec 2021 and advises labs to use alternatives that are capable of differentiating flu from Covid (https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert-Changes_CDC_RT-PCR_SARS-CoV-2_Testing_1.html)
Given that Covid seems to have displaced flu in 2020/21 one doesn’t have to be a genius to realise that some things may be connected.
See also https://principia-scientific.com/laboratories-in-us-cant-find-covid-19-in-1500-positive-tests/ – but can find flu!
If you want to know more about alleged failings of the PCR test, visit https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/
Jim – look out for the next instalment The Forty Five Steps – all will be explained so I won’t try here!
As for the latest re the CDC post! What they are asking labs to do is replace a single test for Covid – if necessary followed by a single test for flu, with what’s known as a ‘multiplex’ test. They are recommending Covid plus flu A & B as a flu season is expected. One test for several pathogens – Ain’t modern technology great!
As for why no flu – simples. No conspiracy, no misdiagnosis as Covid. Travel restrictions, social distancing, masks – flu is less transmissable than Covid!
What we all are doing is simply discussing something over which we have no control but which gives those that wish to achieve The Great Reset hope that their ways are working. Caution was voiced over PCR last December by the WHO and more recently the US has scraped LFT’s and advised everyone to throw them in the trash.
The revised testing methods from next December will simply keep the pot boiling and the big Pharma companies in clover whilst we mere plebs are conditioned to receive a yearly jab for some spurious complaint or disease that hardly exists.
When we have achieved a standard test accepted worldwide then we will have something to talk about. And as the scholl holidays begin so postive tests are falling so that tells us all we need to now about the effective ness of PCR and LFTs. They are a means to keep the populous in fear and nothing else. There is no public Health Emergency and hasn’t been for over a year other for those that were denied essential treatment during the season of Covid Fraud.