WHO did not say PCR test flaw led to overstated COVID-19 cases
Why did they say it?
Who said this:
The claim: PCR creator Kary Mullis said the tests can detect 'anything in anybody' and can't tell you if you're sick
Biochemist and PCR test creator Kary Mullis died in 2019, months before the pandemic emerged, but some of his decades-old comments are being used on social media in an attempt to cast doubt on the reliability of COVID-19 test results.
Mullis won the 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction, a technique used to amplify DNA and detect viruses. Misinformation about PCR tests, which scientists call the “gold standard” for a COVID-19 diagnosis, has circulated online for more than a year.
Now, some users are suggesting Mullis himself said the tests shouldn’t be used to detect viruses.
A Jan. 11 Facebook post with more than 300 interactions claims Mullis said, "Anyone can test positive for practically anything with a PCR test, if you run it long enough with PCR if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody. It doesn’t tell you that you’re sick."
Fact-checking organizations debunked similar versions of this claim in November 2020, but the quote continues to make the rounds on social media without proper context. While Mullis made the statement attributed to him, he was speaking about how he opposed using PCR tests to detect HIV, not COVID-19.
Mullis on PCR testing
The quote in question stems from a July 1997 meeting in Santa Monica, California, where Mullis spoke about the high sensitivity levels of PCR tests and how results can be misinterpreted.
In response to a question from an audience member about how PCR tests can be misused, Mullis says the test itself can’t be misused, but rather the interpretations of it can, because the test creates “a whole lot of something from something.”
“If they could find this virus in you at all, and with the PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody,” Mullis said. “It starts to get you to believe in some kind of Buddhist notion, where everything is contained there and everything in between.”
Mullis added that someone with HIV is generally going to have “almost anything that you can test for” and “there’s a good chance you’ve also got a lot of other ones.”
His comments were related to his argument that PCR tests shouldn't be used to diagnose AIDS. For years, Mullis denied that HIV was the cause of AIDS.
The post cites Mullis's quote – in the midst of a pandemic where PCR tests are frequently used to diagnose COVID-19 – without clarifying his comments were tied to HIV, not the coronavirus. Health experts say the tests are the most accurate and reliable tests available for diagnosing . PCR technology has also advanced since Mullis made the comments in the 1990s.
USA TODAY has previously debunked claims that PCR tests can't discern different strains, or that the tests are vaccines in disguise. Health officials say the chance of a false positive with a PCR test is extremely low, and the test cannot mistake COVID-19 for influenza.
Fact check: CDC is withdrawing its PCR COVID-19 test, but not because it confuses viruses
Our rating: Missing context
Based on our research, we rate MISSING CONTEXT the claim that Mullis said PCR tests can detect "anything in anybody" and can't tell you if you're sick, because it can be misleading without additional information. The quote included in the post is from 1997, and Mullis was speaking about how he opposed using PCR tests to detect the HIV virus. The comment is not related to COVID-19, and health experts say PCR tests are accurate and reliable in detecting COVID-19.
Our fact-check sources:
Thejournal.ie, Nov. 26, 2020, Fact Check: Did the creator of PCR tests say they don't work for Covid-19?
Archive.org, July 12, 1997, Kary Mullis, inventor of the PCR Test, Santa Monica 12 July 1997 (Part 1)
Frontiers in Public Health, Sept. 23, 2014, Questioning the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis: 30 Years of Dissent
The New York Times, March 11, 1993, Debunking Doubts That H.I.V. Causes AIDS
The New England Journal of Medicine, Dec. 11, 2003, The Discovery of HIV as the Cause of AIDS
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed Jan. 13, HIV and AIDS Timeline
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, June 4, 2009, The Relationship between AIDS and HIV
The Washington Post, April 10, 1998, PANEL REBUTS BIOLOGIST'S CLAIMS ON CAUSE OF AIDS
Los Angeles Times, Aug. 13, 2019, Kary Mullis, quirky Nobel laureate whose DNA discovery changed the science world, dies
Yale Medicine, Oct. 20, 2021, Which COVID-19 Test Should You Use?
Cleveland Clinic, Aug. 24, 2021, COVID-19 and PCR Testing
Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, Feb. 28, 2017, Advances in PCR Technology and Its Applications in Healthcare Research
USA TODAY, July 31, 2021, Fact check: Genomic sequencing, not PCR testing, detects COVID-19 variants
USA TODAY, Oct. 15, 2021, Fact check: COVID-19 PCR test created to detect infection, not vaccinate
USA TODAY, Feb. 11, 2021, Fact check: Post distorts WHO's COVID-19 PCR testing guidelines
USA TODAY, July 29, 2021, Fact check: CDC test doesn't conflate COVID-19 virus with influenza
Who posted an isolated sentence out of context?
....Neil Young objected to sharing his music on a platform with Rogan and left. That's his right.
It is his right, but I don't agree with his desire to force out speech he disagrees with.
I don't believe anybody anymore.
One minute you’re giving lectures for 10 to 20 people and the next, talking to an audience of an estimated 11 million.
Such, anyway, was the case for Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist and professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University, when he was invited to appear on Joe Rogan’s wildly popular podcast on Wednesday.
Dr Dessler, who has a PhD in chemistry from Harvard and has worked for Nasa, said that there wasn’t much time to ponder whether to appear on The Joe Rogan Experience, which has been the source of recent misinformation controversies over Covid-19 and climate change.
“[Joe Rogan] asked me on Sunday afternoon,” Dr Dessler toldThe Independent. “If he’d asked longer in advance, I might not have done it but the timeline was so short, I agreed before I thought about it.”
He added: “He’s very controversial, I understand that. But his audience is too large, and it was too good of an opportunity to try to get the message out about climate change. I viewed that as being the most important factor.”
In a typically lengthy episode – lasting two hours, 12 minutes – the scientist and Rogan had a wide-ranging discussion on climate change which jumped from plummeting costs of renewable energy to deadly air pollution from fossil fuels, and the efficacy of debating scientific facts.
Dr Dessler said that he was happy with the interview overall but called it one of the “most challenging” he had ever done.
“In any two-hour interview, you’re going to say things that you regret later. I shouldn’t have brought up cryptocurrency – that was a mistake,” he noted. (Dr Dessler had pointed out that cryptocurrency mining is an energy intensive process, among other remarks, which has provoked the ire of the very vocal Twitter crypto community.)
He continued: “That said, I’m cautiously optimistic that I got the message out, and that people will hear it and understand how solid climate science is, how good renewable energy is, and how bad fossil fuels are.
“And, that this is a problem we can solve – that’s really the message. It’s not a scientific or technical problem. It’s a political problem.”
Rogan has aired several episodes with guests discussing climate change since the start of the year. By some metrics, his show gets 11 million downloads per episode.
In January, Dr Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychiatrist and author who is not a climate scientist, used the platform to claim that climate science has no basis in reality, and that solar power kills more people than nuclear.
Last week, Rogan’s guest was Dr Steven Koonin, a physicist and former chief scientist for BP who served in the Obama administration. His book, Unsettled, argues the consensus on climate change is less clear than commonly thought. A review by Scientific American described the book as “making distracting, irrelevant, misguided, misleading and unqualified statements about supposed uncertainties that he thinks scientists have buried under the rug”.
(Last year a review of 90,000 academic papers on climate change found that 99.9 per cent of scientists were in agreement that humans were causing the crisis, a level of scientific certainty on par with evolution.)
Spotify, a Swedish-based, public company, has faced increased scrutiny over its responsibility for misinformation and pseudoscience on the platform, issues which have long plagued other tech giants like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
At the heart of the furore is Rogan, a stand-up comedian and UFC commentator, with the platform’s most popular show. Spotify paid a reported $200m for its exclusive rights, according to The New York Times.
The rock star Neil Young was the first of several high-profile musicians who asked Spotify to remove his song catalogue due to repeated Covid misinformation on Rogan’s podcast. Singer-songwriter India.Arie asked for her music to be removed due to Rogan’s “problematic language around race”.
Spotify has said that it is committed to free speech but also removed past episodes of Rogan’s show. The company’s content guidelines have also been made public, and “content advisories” would be added to Covid episodes.
On Thursday, Rogan posted to Instagram: “2 perspectives on climate change. Steven Koonin, physicist, who wrote the book “unsettled” and Andrew Dessler climate scientist and Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University. Both had a completely different perspective.”
While many followers posted with praise for Rogan, one user responded: “Maybe next week you could show the different perspectives of the holocaust? Or gravity?”
On Wednesday’s show, Rogan appeared genuinely astonished by some facts provided by Dr Dessler including when he refuted Dr Koonin’s earlier claim that fossil fuels were the cheapest energy sources. The professor noted that, at times, Texas generates half its power from wind turbines. (Dr Dessler later shared data from the Texas power grid, ERCOT, on his Twitter account.)
The day after the interview aired, and following a negative barrage on social media, Dr Dessler told The Independent that a lot of people had out-of-date views on renewables.
“I don’t blame people because renewable energy is changing so fast,” he said. “Last March wind and solar were over 40 per cent of [Texas] power. To be clear, it doesn’t always generate that much power – the spring is the period where wind and solar generate the highest fraction. But still, it’s generating enormous amounts.
“People just don’t believe it because their knowledge is, for example, from 2015 when Texas didn’t have nearly as much renewable energy. And when I say wind and solar are the cheapest, maybe they’re thinking 2010, when solar was the most expensive form of energy.”
Dr Dessler also appeared to shock Rogan as he listed the myriad negative consequences of burning fossil fuels, particularly coal. He pointed out that coal kills millions of people from air pollution globally, including tens of thousands of Americans, due to the small particulate matter, called PM2.5, which buries deep into lungs, and then transfers to the blood stream. PM2.5 has been linked to cancers, heart attacks and strokes.
“It’s another impact of fossil fuels that anti-climate people leave out of their arguments,” Dr Dessler added.
Towards the end of the interview, Rogan asked the climate scientist if he would be interested in a debate with Dr Koonin.
Dr Dessler said that while he wouldn’t debate science which “has already been debated in the scientific system”, he would be “happy to debate policy”.
Rogan replied that a debate on the science would be “very beneficial” for the “average person”, to which Dr Dessler strongly disagreed.
Later, the college professor mulled over if he had made his point well, saying that he had a “lot of hate mail” on the subject.
But he remained firm, saying that it was“the goal of the fossil fuel industry to keep the idea of [scientific] debate alive”.
“For people who don’t want to take action on climate, it allows them to continue to insist there’s a debate – because you just had a debate! I still feel strongly it’s a bad idea,” he said.
Given the opportunity, Dr Dessler said he would likely accept an invitation to go on Rogan’s podcast again, to be part of helping to further understanding of the climate crisis.
“I think this one event probably reached more people than everything I've done in my entire career,” he said. “It's probably 10 or 100 times more people. I've given a lot of talks to 10 or 20 people over the years.
“I think you can't overstate the importance of taking advantage of those kind of platforms when they become available. That's really the way I look at.”
In America currently, speaking your opinions on a few subjects when your opinion doesn’t follow the national narrative is considered practically illegal. He had to fight for the right to continue speaking his opinions.
Or: a former actor/MMA commentator decided to start a podcast talking about things that interested him. As his opinions and persona began to resonate with a hella lotta people, he got more interesting guests. But some of his opinions on vaccines were really out of sync with the science and his opinions and his platform started to cause harm.
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[question]
Do you have proof of “harm” Rogan caused?
Medical professionals reached out to him to help him understand the science. He doubled down on the misinformation, using his growing platform to give voice to ever more radical voices.
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This is where Rogan’s ability to speak his opinions comes in. I’m sure he
understood the government narrative, but he wasn’t forced by law to parrot it.
He resisted kowtowing to the pressure, and we saw that he risked his ability to keep his job.
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Others started raising their voices, saying this is dangerous, people are going to get hurt. Those people are viscously attacked for warning about the significant health risks that the anti vax crowd is promoting.
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Be assured—members of the vax crowd were equally if not more viscous! “They don’t deserve healthcare!” “I hope they all die off.” It was a two-way street.
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Rogen continues to expand his platform, providing medical advice all the while claiming he's not a medical professional. Despite the significant risks, more people speak out and Young actually takes action, giving up a significant source of revenue in protest. Rogen wraps himself in the flag and claims he is a martyr while basking in all the attention and wealth pandering to the anti-vax crowd has brought him.
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I gotta say, people speaking out is meaningless. The feelings of the crowd don’t matter. Young followed his conscience; Rogan followed his. Rogan NEVER wrapped himself in the flag. Rogan responded humbly, stated his opinion and feelings about what happened. It’s not fair to make false statements.
He might have been fired, deplatformed, canceled. I thought he might be.
He wasn’t.
I think the market handled it perfectly.
Do you have proof of “harm” Rogan caused?
He resisted kowtowing to the pressure, and we saw that he risked his ability to keep his job.
Be assured—members of the vax crowd were equally if not more viscous! “They don’t deserve healthcare!” “I hope they all die off.” It was a two-way street.
Young followed his conscience; Rogan followed his. Rogan NEVER wrapped himself in the flag. Rogan responded humbly, stated his opinion and feelings about what happened. It’s not fair to make false statements.
He might have been fired, deplatformed, canceled. I thought he might be.
