BREAKING NEWS: ‘Made in Germany’ RT-PCR test from Prof. C. Drosten and his colleague is found to contain 10 major flaws rendering the test useless! The scandal exposed in peer review from a group of international scientists.
The RT-PCR test and its protocols were submitted by Prof. C. Drosten and his colleague at Eurosurveillance on 23 January 2020.
Who is Eurosurveillance?
Since March 2007, Eurosurveillance has been published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm, Sweden. ECDC funds this journal with its own resources; Eurosurveillance does not have any other sources of funding.
Eurosurveillance is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Membership indicates that the journal intends to follow the highest standards of publication ethics and to apply COPE principles of publication ethics outlined in COPE’s Core Practices.
The Eurosurveillance ranks 6 among the 93 journals in the category of Infectious Diseases.
Now that you know who Eurosurveillance is and in short what was submitted now let’s have a look at how this all came about.
It seemed in January that the world was facing an impending epidemic caused by a deadly new virus and that a swift response based on inevitably limited data was of the utmost importance to avert a potential global catastrophe. One of the most important tools in this fight to detect, isolate, and suppress the virus is the PCR test. The Charité Institute of Berlin led by Prof. Drosten was quick to recognize the extreme seriousness of the situation and developed the first PCR test protocol to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in record time. This was simultaneously selected and recommended by the WHO and became the global first line of defence.
Eleven months into the pandemic we have now learned much more about the virus and the multitude of PCR test variants made possible by the Corman-Drosten protocol. Flaws in the test protocol have become increasingly clear and our review report addresses these tremendous concerns.
Additionally alarming, and especially pertinent to this argument, as the PCR test has impacted all levels of global society as perhaps no test has ever done before, are the unforeseen consequences caused by the rise in RT-PCR cases. Over one hundred governments have used these results to apply unprecedented measures to control transmission; such as lockdowns which have irreparably impacted millions of lives and livelihoods and direct attacks on people’s basic rights and personal freedoms, further resulting in catastrophic damages for entire economies
Before you read on it is important to keep in mind that all the new rules, regulations, and even new laws that we are experiencing right now are all based on this RT-PCR test.
Think about it for a moment what this actually means? Does this mean that our Government policies, regulations, and even new laws in relation to SARS-CoV-2 are based on falsehoods? Yes, you hear it correctly falsehoods. How can this be you might ask and why is the World Health Organisation (WHO) our Government Leaders, Health Ministers, their Advisors, and Government organisations not being stopped?
Well, they are about to because you and millions of others are about to learn the truth.
At the start of the blog post, I mentioned that Prof. C. Drosten and his colleagues had submitted the RT-PCR test protocols at Eurosurveillance on the 23rd January 2020
and on November 28th, 2020 a retraction request letter to the Eurosurveillance editorial board was made.
This is the retraction-request letter sent to Eurosurveillance by the main & co-author’s, written by Dr. Peter Borger, enclosed to the extended Review Report submission via the Eurosurveillance online-submission portal. Submission date was 27th November 2020.
We, an international consortium of life-science scientists, write this letter in response to the article “Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR” published in Eurosurveillance (January 23rd, 2020) and co-authored by Victor M Corman , Olfert Landt , Marco Kaiser , Richard Molenkamp, Adam Meijer, Daniel KW Chu, Tobias Bleicker , Sebastian Brünink, Julia Schneider , Marie Luisa Schmidt , Daphne GJC Mulders , Bart L Haagmans , Bas van der Veer , Sharon van den Brink, Lisa Wijsman, Gabriel Goderski, Jean-Louis Romette, Joanna Ellis, Maria Zambon, Malik Peiris, Herman Goossens, Chantal Reusken, Marion PG Koopmans, and Christian Drosten.
This paper (hereafter referred to as “Corman-Drosten paper”), published by “Eurosurveillance” on 23 January 2020, describes an RT-PCR method to detect the novel Coronavirus (also known as SARS-CoV2). After careful consideration, our international consortium of Life Science scientists found the Corman-Drosten paper is severely flawed with respect to its biomolecular and methodological design. A detailed scientific argumentation can be found in our review “External peer review of the RT-PCR test to detect SARS-CoV2 reveals 10 major scientific flaws at the molecular and methodological level: consequences for false-positive results”, which we herewith submit for publication in Eurosurveillance.
Further, the submission date and acceptance date of this paper are January 21st and January 22nd, respectively. Considering the severe errors in design and methodology of the RT-PCR test published by “Eurosurveillance”, this raises the concern whether the paper was subjected to peer-review at all.
A previous request from our side (Dr. P. Borger; email 26/10/2020) to the editors of “Eurosurveillance” to provide the peer review report of the Corman-Drosten paper has not been complied with. We have enclosed your email reply (dated 18/11/2020) indicating that you do not wish to disclose important information to solve this conundrum.
We are confident that you will take our scientific objections seriously and recognize that there is no alternative but to accept our request to retract the Corman-Drosten paper.
Please read on an see for your self what these ten fatal points are in relation to the Corman Drosten Paper discovered by the international consortium of life-science scientists.
SUMMARY CATALOGUE OF ERRORS FOUND IN THE PAPER
This paper will show numerous serious flaws in the Corman-Drosten paper, the significance of which has led to worldwide misdiagnosis of infections attributed to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus – 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and associated with the disease COVID-19. We are confronted with stringent lockdowns which have destroyed many people’s lives and livelihoods, limited access to education and these imposed restrictions by governments around the world are a direct attack on people’s basic rights and their personal freedoms, resulting in collateral damage for entire economies on a global scale.
The Corman-Drosten paper contains the following specific errors:
1. There exists no specified reason to use these extremely high concentrations of primers in this protocol. The described concentrations lead to increased nonspecific bindings and PCR product amplification, making the test unsuitable as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
2. Six unspecified wobbly positions will introduce an enormous variability in the real world laboratory implementations of this test; the confusing nonspecific description in the Corman-Drosten paper is not suitable as a Standard Operational Protocol making the test unsuitable as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
3. The test cannot discriminate between the whole virus and viral fragments. Therefore, the test cannot be used as a diagnostic for intact (infectious) viruses, making the test unsuitable as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus and make inferences about the presence of an infection.
4. A difference of 10° C with respect to the annealing temperature Tm for primer pair1 (RdRp_SARSr_F and RdRp_SARSr_R) also makes the test unsuitable as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
5. A severe error is the omission of a Ct value at which a sample is considered positive and negative. This Ct value is also not found in follow-up submissions making the test unsuitable as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
6. The PCR products have not been validated at the molecular level. This fact makes the protocol useless as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
7. The PCR test contains neither a unique positive control to evaluate its specificity for SARS-CoV-2 nor a negative control to exclude the presence of other coronaviruses, making the test unsuitable as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
8. The test design in the Corman-Drosten paper is so vague and flawed that one can go in dozens of different directions; nothing is standardized and there is no SOP. This highly questions the scientific validity of the test and makes it unsuitable as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
9. Most likely, the Corman-Drosten paper was not peer-reviewed making the test unsuitable as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
10. We find severe conflicts of interest for at least four authors, in addition to the fact that two of the authors of the Corman-Drosten paper (Christian Drosten and Chantal Reusken) are members of the editorial board of Eurosurveillance. A conflict of interest was added on July 29 2020 (Olfert Landt is CEO of TIB-Molbiol; Marco Kaiser is a senior researcher at GenExpress and serves as a scientific advisor for TIB-Molbiol), that was not declared in the original version (and still is missing in the PubMed version); TIB-Molbiol is the company which was “the first” to produce PCR kits (Light Mix) based on the protocol published in the Corman-Drosten manuscript, and according to their own words, they distributed these PCR-test kits before the publication was even submitted [20]; further, Victor Corman & Christian Drosten failed to mention their second affiliation: the commercial test laboratory “Labor Berlin”. Both are responsible for the virus diagnostics there [21] and the company operates in the realm of real-time PCR-testing.
In light of our re-examination of the test protocol to identify SARS-CoV-2 described in the Corman-Drosten paper, we have identified concerning errors and inherent fallacies which render the SARS-CoV-2 PCR test useless.
CONCLUSION
The decision as to which test protocols are published and made widely available lies squarely in the hands of Eurosurveillance. A decision to recognize the errors apparent in the Corman-Drosten paper has the benefit to greatly minimise human cost and suffering going forward.
Is it not in the best interest of Eurosurveillance to retract this paper? Our conclusion is clear. In the face of all the tremendous PCR-protocol design flaws and errors described here, we conclude: There is not much of a choice left in the framework of scientific integrity and responsibility.
INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM OF LIFE-SCIENCE SCIENTISTS
Dr. Pieter Borger, (MSc, Ph.D.), Molecular Genetics, W+W Research Associate, Lörrach, Germany
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Kämmerer, Specialist in Virology / Immunology / Human Biology / Cell Biology, University Hospital Würzburg, Germany
Prof. Dr. Klaus Steger, Department of Urology, Pediatric Urology and Andrology, Molecular Andrology, Biomedical Research Center of the Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany
Prof. Dr. Makoto Ohashi, Professor emeritus, Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology, Tokushima University, Japan
Prof. Dr. med. Henrik Ullrich, Specialist Diagnostic Radiology, Chief Medical Doctor at the Center for Radiology of Collm Oschatz-Hospital, Germany
Rajesh K. Malhotra (Artist Alias: Bobby Rajesh Malhotra), Former 3D Artist / Scientific Visualizations at CeMM – Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2019-2020), University for Applied Arts – Department for Digital Arts Vienna, Austria
Dr. Michael Yeadon, BSc (Hons) Biochem Tox U Surrey, Ph.D. Pharmacology U Surrey. Managing Director, Yeadon Consulting Ltd, former Pfizer Chief Scientist, United Kingdom
Dr. Kevin P. Corbett, MSc Nursing (Kings College London) Ph.D. (London South Bank) Social Sciences (Science & Technology Studies) London, England, United Kingdom
Dr. Clare Craig, MA, (Cantab) BM, BCh (Oxon), FRCPath, United Kingdom
Kevin McKernan, BS Emory University, Chief Scientific Officer, founder Medical Genomics, engineered the sequencing pipeline at WIBR/MIT for the Human Genome Project, Invented and developed the SOLiD sequencer, awarded patents related to PCR, DNA Isolation and Sequencing, USA
Dr. Lidiya Angelova, MSc in Biology, Ph.D. in Microbiology, Former researcher at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Maryland, USA
Dr. Fabio Franchi, Former Dirigente Medico (M.D) in an Infectious Disease Ward, specialized in “Infectious Diseases” and “Hygiene and Preventive Medicine”, Società Scientifica per il Principio di Precauzione (SSPP), Italy
Dr. med. Thomas Binder, Internist and Cardiologist (FMH), Switzerland
Dr. Stefano Scoglio, B.Sc. Ph.D., Microbiologist, Nutritionist, Italy
Dr. Paul McSheehy (BSc, Ph.D.), Biochemist & Industry Pharmacologist, Loerrach, Germany
Dr. Marjolein Doesburg-van Kleffens, (MSc, PhD), specialist in Laboratory Medicine (clinical chemistry), Maasziekenhuis Pantein, Beugen, The Netherlands
Dr. Dorothea Gilbert (MSc, Ph.D.), Ph.D. Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology. DGI Consulting Services, Oslo, Norway
Dr. Rainer Klement, Ph.D, Department of Radiation Oncology, Leopoldina Hospital Schweinfurt, Germany
Dr. Ruth Schrüfer, Ph.D., human genetics/ immunology, Munich, Germany,
Dr. Berber W. Pieksma, General Practitioner, The Netherlands
Dr. med. Jan Bonte Consultant Neurologist, The Netherlands
Dr. Bruno H. Dalle Carbonare, Molecular biologist, IP specialist, BDC Basel, Switzerland
To read the full Corman-Drosten peer-reviewed report please click here
