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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

The Chromosome 8 Bombshell Evidence Canard

The Corona Conspiracy, Part 15

Frank Visser

Just as I thought I had completed my Corona Conspiracy series, a new video by David Icke and Andrew Kaufman attracted my attention. I could not resist to include it in this series, because it sums pretty much everything up I had intended to say about these illustrious figures. The video[1] was released 24 Aug 2020 on Kaufman's YouTube channel, and was a response to an obscure blog post[2], dated April, 6, 2020(!), which claimed the PCR tests used widely for testing Covid-19 actually tested for a sequence that can be found in the human chromosome 8.

Chromosome 8

This would have huge implications. Since neither Icke nor Kaufman believe in the existence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, nor in the reliability of the tests or the reality of any pandemic caused by this virus, they have enthusiastically jumped upon this claim. It would prove what they have been saying all along: we are mislead by the WHO and governments about this virus. We are manipulated into believing there actually is a virus that can be detected accurately, and this whole scam has been set up to poison us with vaccines and enslave us into obedience. And targeting this chromosome with vaccins might even have all kinds of unforeseen (or intended?) health consequences, or so they maintain.

We will do three things: describe the content of this mysterious April blog post, listen to what Icke and Kaufman had to say about it, and add some critical comments about all of these claims. It turns out that this "bombshell", given their utter lack of knowledge about PCR tests, might as well explode into their own face.

‘Bombshell Evidence Against PCR Tests’

The blogpost[2] on Piece of Mindful that is at the center of this discussion, is written by "Fauxlex", an alias for "a young man from the Midwest who once purchased a fake Rolex on the streets of NYC's Chinatown (hence the name). He is college educated, graduating summa cum laude with a BA in Economics", as we learn from the About Us page of this website. The blog is written by a collective of five authors, all of which have a separate navigation button, except for Fauxlex. We learn that he is "an avid fossil hunter, he has built up quite a collection of Silurian era marine specimens. He will gladly debate biology with you, or anything really. He prides himself on an abnormal [sic] ability to reason and view things logically from all sides."

One of its main authors tells us on "A note to regular readers" that the website has been inundated by "100.000 hits" in the past few days, mostly directed at Fauxlex' blogpost, and he is considering to wait and see until this storm passes. In this time of censorship he is not even sure the blog will continue to exist. But: "This too will pass."

So let's check out the content of this blog post, which has generated so much online traffic recently, before it may be too late. I have copied its full content here:

BOMBSHELL: WHO Coronavirus PCR Test Primer Sequence is Found in All Human DNA

This was important enough that I wanted to get it out immediately. My research into the NCBI database for nucleotide sequences has lead to a stunning discovery. One of the WHO primer sequences in the PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 is found in all human DNA!
The sequence "CTCCCTTTGTTGTGTTGT" is an 18-character primer sequence found in the WHO coronavirus PCR testing protocol document. The primer sequences are what get amplified by the PCR process in order to be detected and designated a "positive" test result. It just so happens this exact same 18-character sequence, verbatim, is also found on Homo sapiens chromosome 8! As far as I can tell, this means that the WHO test kits should find a positive result in all humans. Can anyone explain this otherwise?
I really cannot overstate the significance of this finding. At minimum, it should have a notable impact on test results.

Homo sapiens chromosome 8, GRCh38.p12 Primary Assembly
Sequence ID: NC_000008.11 Length: 145138636
Range 1: 63648346 to 63648363 is "CTCCCTTTGTTGTGTTGT"

Update: After some effort, I have finally discovered a way to display proof (beyond my screenshots) that human chromosome 8 has this exact same 18-character sequence. Please try the link below. The sequence is shown at the bottom of the page: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

In the comments section to his blogpost Fauxlex adds more nuance: this may be one of many protocols, and he certainly does not want to claim therefore all tests are faulty. But apparently he is very suspicious of the WHO, and suspects they have devised this particular test with mischievious aims in mind:

This is the WHO protocol. I also came across several private companies (Sigma-Aldrich, Thermo Fisher) whose PCR primer sequences were longer and had no such match. So I am not saying that ALL test kits belong to WHO, but if we were to find shenanigans we would expect to find it with the WHO. This really has me shaken, and I am really starting to believe that the WHO designed a test where they would be able to find a positive anywhere they wanted to find one. Also, the PCR test process is inherently very error-prone and even the WHO test may occasionally have false negatives.

He also has tried to find several other sequences that match the human genome, not only the one mentioned in his blogpost. But this was the jackpot for him:

And I should be clear that it is NOT easy to find an 18-character match like this. In most of my searches, I was finding 14-15 character long matches in human DNA for 20-25 character long primers. Then suddenly BOOM the short 18-character WHO primer sequence has a perfect 18-character match. That is nuts. I really think that the odds are very high that this is a meaningful finding.

Then there's a sobering comment by a Dr. Bernd Paysan, on April 11, 2020:

People, the virus is an RNA virus, and chromosome 8 is DNA. It's not going to be replicated by the RT-PCR, because this process starts with the Reverse Transcriptase (RT!), and therefore does not copy DNA.
The remaining question is whether this snipped can exist as RNA in human cells, which is still possible, but not necessarily likely. The overall test is positive if all three primers+probes are found, so one false positive primer does not kill the entire test.
Furthermore, you also need to have the probe in proximity to the primer. If the PCR doesn't hit the probe, the test will stay negative. Is the probe found in chromosome 8?
The Chinese had some problems with their test in the first weeks, and changed things to improve the situation. This is normal in such a situation, where tests are developed in a hurry. The US CDC had severe quality issues in the beginning, even water tested positive.

To which Fauxlex gives the following candid reply:

Thank you for the comment. This is honestly what I was looking for…hoping to be wrong. Although I disagree that the process could not possibly be thrown off by this error. Any instances where chromosome 8 had been unzipped for replication would leave the matching sequence available for the PCR primer to anneal. This might not cause full replication by the PCR process, but if the test is so touchy you would really think this could throw off their results. If as you say plain water originally tested positive. Thanks again for the comment.
You would think they would have some technology to pick PCR primers that selects against sequences already found within human DNA. They also should have gone with a primer longer than 18 characters if they want reliable results. These tests are going to have a huge rate of false positives and/or negatives to the point where it's questionable how much we can rely upon it. Let alone the idea that 80% of people who test positive show no outward symptoms. We need to end these draconian lockdowns immediately.

"This is honestly what I was looking for…hoping to be wrong." That's the spirit of science. Yet, he is still suspicious about why this particular sequence has been overlooked during the compilation of these tests.

The tone of this blog post is quite reasonable. An amateur science student has stumbled upon something that potentially casts doubt on the reliability of the PCR tests. What if these tests, or at least some of these, just detect some human genetic material and not a fragment of SARS-CoV-2? I will withhold my comments for now, and first present Icke and Kaufman's reflections on this blog post. You can imagine that they are thrilled by this "discovery", even if it came from someone with a WordPress blog.

‘the scale of the hoax which is unfolding all around us’

Note: The Icke/Kaufman video was removed from YouTube in a few days. I had linked to a shared video on another YouTube channel, but that video got removed a day later. I need to link to www.bitchute.com, where all banned videos live, which I prefer not to do, since it is "a video hosting service known for accommodating far-right individuals and conspiracy theorists" (Wikipedia). So go there at your own risk. ;-)

Icke starts with his claim that the current PCR tests don't test for the virus, because there is no virus to start with. Besides, it has come to his attention (through the blog post mentioned above) that at least some of the tests might actually test for human genetic material, more specifically a part of chromosome 8, which is something he has been claiming for months. "That is the scale of ludicrousness, the scale of the hoax which is unfolding all around us." He repeats the familiar tune that the virus has never been purified and isolated, that according to its inventor Kary Mullis the test should not be used to diagnose infectious diseases, but that he now found a bombshell story about the test. He has invited Andrew Kaufman, "a very courageous man and a very a learned man", to speak about these rather technical issues.

You might recall that Icke and Kaufman argued a while ago that the PCR test might detect exosomes instead of viruses (see Part 1), or that viruses and exosomes are actually the same thing (Part 2), but now they give another twist to the continuous story of virus denialism (see also Part 5 for more examples).

Icke is quick to conclude that "if you test positive for something that's naturally in your body, they say you've got the virus. This is the scale of the scam." In Icke's understanding most, if not all, of those who are tested get a positive result, and the admonition of the WHO to "TEST, TEST, TEST" makes sense given their sinister agenda to inflate the number of cases, so they can impose their horrendous lockdown measures (and there is worse to come) on humanity. He introduces Kaufman as "a magnificent exposer from a medical point of view of how this whole Covid-19 scam works." He calls the bombshell blog post an "extraordinary revelation" and "one heck of a story". And he asks Kaufman: "give us your verdict."

Kaufman tells us he knew about this blogpost story and "knew this was a very significant thing" but he "wanted to take my time and verify it and learn a little bit more about it before, you know, speaking about it." He suspected "serious overlap" between "some of the target sequences they are looking for and our human genome because of this confusion about exosomes and what RNA comes from what source in all this." He concluded: "It really confirmed my suspicion and I was glad to see that basically one of the primer sequences in the PCR test according to the Pasteur Institute protocol is an exact match for a sequence in our own human DNA on chromosome 8." Then Kaufman quickly moves to his favorite subject that the swabs taken from a patient contain "a mixture of human cells, virus particles and other microbes which could mean bacteria or fungi or other microbes, okay. So it's not a clean sample." And: "so this is not a pure sample and it certainly contains human genetic material from the beginning, so if we test for it we could find it."

DAVID ICKE 'Fraudulent test, fraudulent cases, fraudulent reasons for lockdown.'	ANDREW KAUFMAN 'The main point: we don't know where these sequences came from.'

Then Kaufman explains that in the PCR test, the tiny amount of RNA in the sample is amplified so that there is enough of it to be detected. He understands that RNA is converted to DNA, and that DNA consists of two complementary strings. The primer sequence, he claims, relates to the sequence that we are looking for in the test. So if the primer is identical to a piece of human DNA, it is possible that detecting this human DNA leads to a positive test result, and basically a false positive (because a virus is not detected). Yet, Kaufman does recognize there are many different primers in use all over the world, and one test also uses more than one primer. Nevertheless, "it adds another level of confusion and obfuscation to how do you interpret the results of a test." The main point remains for him that "we don't know where these sequences came from." And "I would say, you know, there's a hundred percent error rate with this test."

Icke gives his own summary of the situation: "you've got a fraudulent test, you've got fraudulent cases and you've got fraudulent reasons for lockdown." They mock the notion of asymptomatic cases as "if you are tested positive and you have no symptoms there's nothing wrong with you, this scam says. There's nothing wrong with you, but you can pass it on. You can pass on something that you haven't got. But this is why how they're justifying locking down healthy people." In the latter part of the video they chat about how they refuse to comply with the lockdown measures, because "with every acquiescence something else is coming round the corner", and how harmful it is to wear masks, because it is shameful to cover your face.

We leave that highly dubious discussion for now, and will focus on the matter how well Icke and Kaufman have understood the PCR test here. Obviously they haven't even bothered to look at the comments section of the bombshell blog to the effect that both probe and primers have to work together to get a test result, and simply pointing to a similarity of one primer and a piece of DNA doesn't make any sense. Least of all, it offers no ground for these far reaching and paranoid conclusions. Please also note that the percentage of positive outcomes of the PCR test rarely exceeds the 10% (the WHO considers 5% to be reasonable).

But there's more.

‘a massive lack of biochemistry education’

On the website www.peakprosperity.com I happened to find a more recent critical post about this "bombshell" narrative dating back to April. Dr. Jurgen Mayer posted a forum comment on August 23, 2020, in which he is providing eminently sensible information. Mayer is a "scientist of virology and biomolecular chemistry currently focusing on nCoV-2019 genomic structure."[4] He gives an important hint about the nature and function of reverse primers. Responding to a question from a forum participant about the validity of the bombshell blog, he writes:

Dr. Jurgen Mayer[5]

Apologies but this is how bad information gets spread 😄 Allow me to explain a few issues with the original link
The issue in question is with CTCCCTTTGTTGTGTTGT, which is a 6 codon chain. The absolute failure here is that this chain is being read by everyone as a forward primer, when in fact this is a reverse primer. This is clearly stated in the WHO instructions.*
A forward read of CTCCCTTTGTTGTGTTGT gives us LPLLCCSLCCVPFVVL
A reverse read is ACAACACAACAAAGGGAG, which gives us TTQQREQHNKGNTTKG
Search the NT [nucleotides] of hCoV-2019 [human coronavirus] yourself here for the forward string and you will not find it. Then research the reverse that I posted and you will find it every time. [I have done this for you, FV]

You might be thinking... why would they post the forward and then specify for reverse?! Why not just post the reverse?! One would always post forward and then specify the direction. This way we have a global standard to avoid confusion... JUST LIKE THIS... LOL
There is no conspiracy here, no mistake, no false positives based on this test. Just a massive lack of biochemistry education. This is actually a fantastic PCR test they put together that tests multiple sections of the RdRp along with the E protein. Gold star from my end!
As this topic is likely very confusing to most, I am happy to field questions and can reply when I have time.
Info about directions can be found here.

*Note FV: The "Rv" in "nCoV_IP2-12759Rv" means "Reverse":

I know, this is very technical jargon, but it just goes to show the level of expertise needed to play this genomics game—which Icke and Kaufman sorely lack.

Looking for other critical reflections on the Fauxlex/Icke/Kaufman narrative, I found this recent YouTube video, posted on 24 Aug 2020 by Paul Cottrell, very helpful as well[6]:

Though this video is a bit repetitive, the points Cottrell makes are very clear, and devastating for the Icke/Kaufman narrative. Here's a brief summary:

CHECKING THE GENOME DATABASES

Let's follow up on these injunctions and do some gene database searches in the gene banks that are storing all these viral and human genomes.

The first thing to test, I think, which Fauxlex apparently has neglected to do, is check if CTCCCTTTGTTGTGTTGT shows up in the published SARS-CoV-2 reference genome available at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). I can tell you, it does not. So it is one thing to suggest that some sequences found in the SARS-CoV-2 genome might also be present somewhere in the huge human genome (of three billion bases or 3Gb), resulting in possible mismatches. It is something else to suggest it only exists within the human genome (i.e. chromosome 8).

Searching for CTCCCTTTGTTGTGTTGT in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, this is the result:

And the reason this sequence cannot be found in the SARS-CoV-2 genome is that it is a reverse primer. This is the real bombshell under this fake narrative.

However, the three forward primers, which are listed in the WHO document, as mentioned in the Bombshell blogpost, all match with the SARS-CoV-2 genome (and none of them match with human chromosome 8), as you can see below. The numbers on the left indicate the position within the 30.000 base genome):

And now comes the magic trick. If we take the reverse primer that started this whole non-discussion, CTCCCTTTGTTGTGTTGT, and do the following two operations, mirror and reverse, you will find a match in the SARS-CoV-2 genome as well! Keep in mind that A always pairs with T and C always pairs with G:

As always, the Devil is in the details. And wasn't reading backwards one of his tricks?

And here's the perfect match of the mirrored and reversed complement of the reverse primer, as it can be located in the SARS-CoV-2 genome:

So the fact that CTCCCTTTGTTGTGTTGT somehow matches a tiny part of the human genome does not matter, it is not the sequence the test looks for in the first place. The sequence the tests looks for is whatever exists between the forward and the reverse primers. These sequences are very close together in the SARS-CoV-2 genome.

This means that the real sequence this particular test looks for can be found somewhere in this area on the genome, in-between the forward and reverse primers:

The red part of the sequence is called the "probe". That's what this particular test is actually looking for: a sequence of 21 bases as specified in the WHO document:

And yes, that probe sequence too can be found in the SARS-CoV-2 genome:

Here's an even better online "In-Silico" PCR tool, of the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) to check for sequences in various genomes (human, viral, mammal, frogs, fish, etc.).

When checking for forward primer = ATGAGCTTAGTCCTGTTG and reverse primer = CTCCCTTTGTTGTGTTGT, in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, the reversed/mirrored match found for the reverse primer is indeed: ACAACACAAC AAAGGGAG:

However, when searching for the same primers in the human genome, no match is found:

a firecracker that did not fire

Isn't it amazing how accurate all this is? Base-perfect within a 30.000 bases genome! And can't you see how David Icke and Andrew Kaufman lack even the most basic understanding of the PCR test and whole genome sequencing (Part 6) in general? They are just selectively misreading whatever they think they understand from science to find confirmation of their own paranoid narratives.

In a recent blog post, dated August 28, 2020, Fauxlex reflected on his April blogpost going viral:

It is difficult for me to express the various layers of my feelings on the Icke attention and that piece in general. For one, I had not expected an old post from four months ago to go so viral. It is not the post that I would have hoped would go viral, because although the findings do indeed further undermine the PCR test, a deeper scientific understanding can explain why the result isn't as big as had seemed at the time.

The bombshell turned out to be a firecracker that did not fire.

APPENDIX 1: Second Thoughts About the Bombshell

Revisiting the Piece of Mindful website (in November 2021), I found out the author of the Bombshell piece had some second thoughts about his original claims. The webmaster also prefaced the article now with the following disclaimer:

DISCLAIMER: Please read before proceeding…

A previous writer at Piece of Mindful posted this initial "finding" on April 6, 2020, and subsequently a "soft" retraction on October 7, 2020, in light of new information indicating that the implications of his finding may be in dispute. Despite the fact that some researchers are continuing to reference the initial post (the claim of which we cannot stand fully behind at this time), it should NOT detract from, nor negate, scientifically valid points they may posit with regard to the fallacious RT-PCR process, the purported "isolation" of the alleged SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the highly deceptive "sequencing" of said virus.

Note: Current writers of this blog are in FULL support of Dr. Tom Cowan, Sally Fallon and Dr. Andrew Kaufman—as evidenced in recent posts—and we do NOT endorse self-proclaimed "debunkers" of their well-intentioned and nearly impeccable work.

The second thoughts of the original author Fauxlex can be found in the post called "0.0000000000000000014552". He now feels, his original claim was unfounded, though his "finding" still stands.

That post was really only supposed to be a finding. The finding is certainly not being retracted. I did indeed find a complimentary pairing between human DNA and one of the WHO's coronavirus PCR test primers. This is not disputed. It is the significance of this finding that is disputed.

Still not getting that the said string was a reverse primer?

Interestingly, when his original post went viral in September 2020 due to its promotion by David Icke and Andrew Kaufman, "my understanding of PCR and coronavirus had already evolved significantly", he feels. He now expects false negatives to be the problem, not the 100% false positives...

For the scientists out there, I just wanted to set the record straight and explain that I understood my error even at the time this information went viral. As for the post going viral, that did not occur under my direction. I was more surprised than anyone.

Another debunk of the PCR-tests-for-Human-DNA claim

CLAIM: WHO coronavirus PCR test primer sequence is found in all human DNA; this means that the WHO test kits should find a positive result in all humans.

Fails to grasp significance of observation: In order for the PCR amplification process to begin, it is essential to have two primers that flank the same target sequence. When only one of the primers binds to a sequence, amplification does not occur and the test result will always be negative.

Flawed reasoning: If the SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test detected human DNA, then all tests would return a positive result. This is clearly contradicted by the fact that, as of 30 August 2020, only about 9% of all tests administered in the U.S. have been positive.

Key takeaway: The reverse-transcription PCR (RT-PCR) test is the method of choice for detecting SARS-CoV-2 in samples and is highly specific for the virus. For a PCR test to successfully amplify nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) in a sample, it is necessary for a pair of primers, which are short sequences of single-stranded nucleic acids that recognize and bind to a specific region of the genome, to flank the same target sequence. If only one primer in the pair is able to do so, amplification does not take place and the test produces a negative result. Therefore, even when an RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 uses a primer that matches a human gene sequence, the test would not produce a positive result with human DNA alone because the other primer does not match the human gene sequence.[7]

NOTES

[1] David Icke & Andrew Kaufman, "Chromosome 8 w/ David Icke and Dr. Kaufman", www.youtube.com, August 24, 2020. This video has been removed for violating YouTube's Terms of Service.

[2] Fauxlex, "BOMBSHELL: WHO Coronavirus PCR Test Primer Sequence is Found in All Human DNA", pieceofmindful.com, April 6, 2020.

[3] Paul Cottrell, "Debunking the Chromosome 8 RT-PCR theory by Dr. Paul Cottrell", www.youtube.com, 24 Aug 2020.

[4] tbp, "BOMBSHELL: WHO Coronavirus PCR Test Primer Sequence is Found in All Human DNA", www.peakprosperity.com, Aug 20, 2020.

[5] Dr. Jurgen Mayer's view of the SARS-CoV-2 virus: "Every aspect of the genome of hCoV-2019 can be explained by zoonosis and potentially explains the existence of a polybasic furin cleavage site in our virus, as it was more than likely adapted by another virus. That being said, the natural creation of this virus is a one in a billion chance. There is nothing to suggest that a magic bat in nature directly infected a human. We have two possible paths here. Either this was created in a lab, and yes we can tinker in such a way to ensure the virus has these modes of attack or we use zoonosis with just the right bat infecting just the right Pangolin, and then infecting a human. The problem is that we have not been able to identify any host animals." (forum post on peakprosperity.com)

[6] Paul Cottrell has his own ideas about Covid-19. For these I refer to his YouTube channel. This is his bio: "Paul Cottrell received his BS and MBA from Wayne State University, Ph.D. from Walden University and pre-medical curriculum from Fordham University. He is a candidate pursuing an ALM in Biology at Harvard University (HES). His research includes using chaos theory to model financial markets and economic emergence. His work on economic emergence contains new theoretical concepts of economic evolution and the creation of self organizational structures. In addition, Dr. Paul Cottrell has published works from his Harvard University (HES) course work in genomics, neurobiology, endocrinology and microbiota."

[7] Flora Teoh, "Human DNA does not produce a positive result on the RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2", healthfeedback.org, 31 Aug 2020.