Archived
file from fullfact.org
The inventor of PCR never said it
wasn’t designed to detect infectious diseases
23 October 2020
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What was claimed:
Kary B Mullis invented the PCR test
that’s being used as the Covid-19 test. He died suddenly in August 2019.
Our veredict [fullfact.org]:
He did invent PCR, which is a process
used to test whether someone currently has Covid-19. He did die in
August 2019.
What was claimed:
Kary B
Mullis said that his PCR test was not made to detect any type of
infectious disease. It’s designed to pick up a signature of DNA and RNA
of the person being tested.
Our veredict [fullfact.org]:
He
never said this. This is a misunderstanding of a quote from him
about the limitations of PCR testing in general, to find out about the
exact levels of a virus in a sample, not whether or not the sample
contained the virus.
A number of posts on Facebook (1)
have made claims about the man who
invented PCR tests, Dr Kary B. Mullis, and what that means about
Covid-19 testing. One such post claims:
“[Dr Mullis] said that this PCR test
was not made to detect any type of infectious disease. It’s designed to
pick up a signature of DNA and RNA of the person being tested.”
There is absolutely no evidence that the inventor of the PCR process said this. PCR is used for a number
of scientific processes, and in general, it amplifies bits of genetic
information so that they can be detected within samples. But PCR tests
are specific to the DNA they are testing for, whether that’s of a
person or a virus, so aren’t “designed” to pick up the genetic material
of the person being tested.
What is PCR?
In the UK, testing to see whether someone currently has Covid-19 is
performed using an extremely common process called PCR, and known as a
PCR test (2).
This involves (3)
taking a swab from someone’s throat and nose,
and then using PCR to detect the genetic material of the virus that
causes Covid-19 (which is called SARS-CoV-2).
PCR, or polymerase chain reaction (4), is just the process by
which this
genetic material can be detected by scientists. The laboratory doing
the testing adds a very specific substance to the sample, and if the
sample contains any SARS-CoV-2, this substance triggers a chain
reaction that creates enough copies of the genetic material so that it
can be detected through analysis.
PCR was indeed invented by a man called Kary B. Mullis (5), who died in
August 2019 long before Covid-19 began to spread in December 2019 (6).
He didn’t say PCR testing
couldn’t be used for testing for any diseases, as some social media
posts claim. Confusion seems to have arisen (7) from quotes of his in a
1996 article (8)
about HIV and AIDS. In this, neither the author of the
article, nor Dr Mullis said
PCR testing does not work or only identifies the DNA or RNA of the
person being tested.
The author actually quotes Dr Mullis
as saying “Quantitative PCR is an oxymoron” within the context
of testing viral load (the amount of virus present) in people with HIV.
This doesn’t mean he thought PCR testing didn’t work at all, but that
there are limitations (9)
in detecting the specific levels of a virus from
a sample using PCR testing.
Fact checkers at Australian Associated Press (10) say that when the
quotes
about PCR testing picking up the DNA of the person being tested first
appeared online, they were “not
attributed to Dr Mullis but to an online commenter called
"VirusGuy"”.
This
article is part of our work [fullfact.org] checking potentially
false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about
this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here (11). For the purposes
of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false (12) because he did not say
this about Covid-19 PCR testing, he was talking about
quantitative
testing for viruses.
By Grace Rahman
Copyright 2021 Full Fact
(1) https://www.facebook.com/david.nikao/posts/2726535644287456
(2) https://www.england.nhs.uk/.../guidance-and-sop-covid-19-virus-testing-....pdf#PAGE=3
(3) https://www.gov.uk/.../types-and-uses-of-coronavirus-covid-19-tests#virus-testing
(4) https://www.imperial.nhs.uk/.../coronavirus-testing-explained#PCR...
(5) https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1993/mullis/facts/
(6) https://www.who.int/news/item/29-06-2020-covidtimeline
(7) https://www.facebook.com/ProgressiveTruthSeekers/photos/a.325627377...
(8) http://www.virusmyth.org/aids/hiv/jlprotease.htm
(9) https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-59524-0_3
(10) https://www.aap.com.au/pcr-inventor-who-died-in-2019-did-not-say-.../
(11) https://fullfact.org/blog/2019/jan/full-fact-start-checking-facebook-.../
(12) https://www.facebook.com/help/publisher/182222309230722
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