Throughout the pandemic doubts have been expressed about the reliability of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests which have been used as the ‘gold standard’ of testing for Covid-19 in Britain and elsewhere. Some of this criticism has centred around alleged quotes from Kary Mullis, the Nobel Prize-winner chemist who invented the PCR test in 1985 and who died in 2019.
Mullis has been said by some to have dismissed the use of the tests for detecting viruses – or more specifically said they cannot be used to detect the presence of ‘free infectious viruses’, although others have said the quote did not come from him.
The idea that PCR tests are being misused to diagnose Covid infection, and that they are inflating the level of infection, has been dismissed by many as a conspiracy theory parroted by a political fringe.
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