The
Department at the WHO I am petitioning, of Food Safety and Zoonoses,
was the only one I could find an email for at the time. I'm not sure if
anything is being implied by 'Zoonoses', but if there is a programme of
eugenics, a chapter in a book I have from the 1960s, by a John Maynard
Smith, seems to imply that it was already happening then. The photo
above [on change.org petition] was taken by me last October on the pavement outside Rutgers
University, near the Smith and Olson science halls.
There are limits to magnification. With lenses you start to focus on
the lens itself and with mirror or light projection distinguishing
lines disappear and the image disperses. However, whether or not high
magnifications can be achieved or produce clear images in theory, the
microscope is not constructed to view the slide at the highest
magnification possible. This implies at least that the diagnosis of
disease is fraudulent.
To view what is on a microscope slide you need very high
magnifications, for example, 10,000 times to view an HIV cell, so that
in theory we would then be looking for abnormalities in a sample on a
slide that had been magnified so that its image measured 600 metres by
200 metres. With even more powerful microscopes, we can apparently
obtain a clear image of an electron moving at 2,200 kilometres a
second.
However, whether or not we would be able to photograph or even view
fast moving parts when experience of using a camera or, for example,
watching a train pass at high speed through a station, suggests we would
not, observation when using magnifying glasses suggests that the limits
to lens magnification are in fact low.
Magnification occurs when we view a smaller area as though it were
larger (which is what happens when we reduce or extend focal length) and
increases as we lift the lens from or bring it closer to the object we
are viewing or use a thicker, or larger or smaller, lens, or block out
surrounding light, or use multiple lenses.
However, the point is reached quite quickly when either the object
returns to normal size or distortions occur, when the image is displaced
sideways or reduced, and then disappears. This is because either we
view the object again as though without a lens, because it no longer
influences our focus, or we start to focus on the lens itself rather
than the object behind it.
Although higher magnifications are possible with projection, the
image coarsens as it enlarges, let alone do we see below to any
underlying structure.
However, even if there were not relatively low limits to lens
magnification and clear enlargement, the traditional microscope, upon
which the diagnosis of modern diseases rely, does not optimise
magnification.
In my own microscope, a Prinz Model 2801, purchased in the late
1960s, the drop does appear to be vertical, so that we could in theory
see from the eyepiece to the objective lenses. However, the lens tube is
dimly lit, and has to be for the objects on the screen not to blur, so
it seems unlikely one would be able to look into the eyepiece and lens
tube and then down through the very small objective lenses to any object
on a slide beyond them, even though the internal light is located below
the screen and whether or not a light is also placed on the outside of
the microscope and shone onto the slide, which it was not with a
traditional microscope.
Lighting the microscope with the mirror instead of internally might
seem likely to improve visibility of what is on the slide, but the fact
that the mirror has to be at 45 degrees for light to be reflected means
that it is relatively diffuse by the time it passes through the slide
and enters the objective lenses, even when light is from a spotlight,
and in neither case will we view the entire slide.
My microscope claims a zoom magnification of only 900 times. However,
the focal adjustment does not alter magnification and neither do the
rotating objective lenses Although the objective lenses are said to be
the more powerful of the lenses, with a magnification of 30 to 60,
common sense alone suggests this is unlikely, given the very small lens
tubes and diameters smaller than the pupil of the eye. Not only would
magnification not be optimised but precision would be more difficult to
achieve.
However, more importantly, the diameter of the lenses and their
proximity to the slide means that direct viewing of the object on the
slide at a hypothetically high magnification would not be possible for
the reason that the angle of magnification would have to exceed the
limit at which light could theoretically leave a plane surface lens: ie,
it would need to be more than 180 degrees.
A higher degree of magnification could be achieved in theory by
projecting the image of the object we wish to see rather than by viewing
it directly, but, setting aside the fact that this is not said to be
the mechanism of magnification, as well as the question of what clarity
we might expect if a slide were projected onto a screen of 200 by 600
metres, the fact that the slide is placed outside the microscope rather
than inside it, that the screen is behind it rather than in front of it,
that the mirror is placed at 45 degrees, but also that the slide is so
close to the final lens, the diameter of the objective aperture is so
small and the lens tube so short means that projection will be limited.
The limits of magnification are hinted at in this quote from a
textbook with a 1931 publication date: "If well corrected lenses are
used, the magnifying power of the microscope should be at least that
necessary to reveal the finest details resolvable by the objective. For
the normal eye, this is equivalent to about 500 to 700 times the
numerical aperture of the objective."
What then are we seeing when looking into the microscope? When I
look into my own microscope, I see the same basic image whatever slide
is present on the microscope stage. This is of relatively fixed shadowy
and translucent objects on a circular screen at the end of a cylinder,
as well as translucent and moving objects in layers further up the
microscope. Both images include ribbon-like objects of a similar length
and width and with similar knots in them, although there are dark spots
present on the image on the screen. These images remain whether or not
the slide is present.
The translucent and moving images higher up the microscope are the
lenses of my own eye. I know this because the image is the same as in
front of my eyes when looking into bright light as well as because the
image shifts as I shift my eyes. However, the image on the screen
further down the microscope, although resembling the lens of my eye, is
fixed.
In fact, if I turn the microscope upside down, I see just above two
of the objective lenses, three when photographed, what look like the
orange irises of a bird such as a pigeon (facing into the microscope).
Because the image on the screen resembles the lenses of our own eye, it
seems plausible that the object we are viewing is in fact the lens of
an eye.
The fact that only the position of the image relative to fixed sides
changes when the lenses are rotated suggests projection forward, rather
than backwards from different objects, as does the opaque look to the
screen (we seem to see nothing beyond it). It therefore seems likely
that a fourth object, the lens of an eye or an image of one, is placed
higher up the microscope, projected onto an opaque screen further down
the microscope. I have not been able to verify this because the
microscope is is not easy to take apart.
Magnification, defined by Dorland's Medical Dictionary as "apparent
increase in size under the microscope", occurs as a result of the
reduction in focal length as one looks into the relatively short lens
tube of the microscope, even though the effect of the reduction in focal
length is to make the cylinder appear longer than it is and the
circular screen larger than the diameter of the lens tube. The
cylindrical shape enables us to focus on the objects on the screen,
which would otherwise be blurred because they are too close. The focal
adjustment may vary focus for different users but also according to the
position of the microscope in different lights. The objective lens lets
in light when the microscope is lit by the mirror as well as any
vividly coloured material on the slide.
Looking closely into the eyepiece also reveals that there are likely
to be an inner and outer tube since rotation of the eyepiece results in
rotation of the edges of the screen whereas rotation of the focal
adjustment results in a rotation of the image on the screen. However,
this is implied rather than shown in drawings of the optical system of
the microscope. Rotating the image does not alter the size of the
objects but does allow us to see more or less of them, indicating that
more or less light is let in below the screen, on which the visible
objects spiral as the adjustment is turned.
One has to account for variations when viewing different slides under
the microscope. When the microscope is lit from the mirror, an opaque
object will block visibility so that nothing is seen on the circular
microscope screen. A translucent sample will not alter the image on the
screen. However, when a stain is put on a slide, it will appear as an
undifferentiated wash over the microscope screen.
A slide may sometimes produce a complex image that might lead us to
think that we are viewing something at a high magnification. Instead, we
are viewing a pattern of light and shade from objects of varying
opacities at relatively low magnifications: light will shine through
some parts or objects on the slide but not others, and to a differing
extent, so that there are shades of dark and light. However, one
explanation for striking variations with apparently translucent material
is that we are looking at a gas streak on the slide or lens or from a
spotlight.
Once one accepts the idea that diseases may be fictitious, one can
think of other arguments and make other observations to support this,
such as, for instance, the fact that the link between DNA and mutation
seems to be asserted rather than explained and to have no foundation in
the philosophy of science, since the incompatibility of the abstract and
the physical is not resolved (there is not, nor can there be, a
mechanism by which one influences the other).
Diagnosed diseases make people fall ill or die, as well as
restricting lives in other ways, not because they are real but because
of fear and fatalism and other factors such as insufficient or poor
nutrition or a restricted diet, extreme variations in temperature, the
denial of food and water in hospitals, gassing in and out of hospitals,
and perhaps even the premature pronouncement of death. It may be that
all politicians and all doctors know that microscopes, the basis of
medical diagnosis, are fraudulent, or all pathologists, or it may be
only those who design and make scientific instruments.
Please sign the petition if you agree with it. However, if you are
not persuaded but it raises doubts, please show the petition or ask a
question about microscope magnification to anybody you know with a
medical, scientific, engineering, photographic or optics background.
And please look back at the petition again to see improvements, although
I will check with change.org to see whether names can be removed once
they have been added before making any more amendments to the text or
adding photographs.
Louisa Orrock, BSc (Econ): International Relations, 1981, MA (ILAS), 1986
Bibliography:
Britannica Concise Encyclopaedia (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc, 2002)
Chamot, Emile Monnin, and Mason, Clyde, Walter, Handbook of Chemical
Microscopy, Volume I (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1931)
Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary, Twenty Third Edition (Philadelphia and London, W. B. Saunders, 1957)
The Hutchinson Encyclopaedia (Oxford, Helicon Publishing, 1994)
Maynard Smith, John, 'Eugenics and Utopia', in Frank E. Manuel, Utopias and Utopian Thought (Boston, Beacon Press, 1966)
Orrock, Louise, On HIV and Aids, Taxila Institute (institute.iqmind.org/on-hiv-and-aids-by-louise-orrock), June 8, 2015
Orrock, Louise, On Cancer, Taxila Institute (institute.iqmind.org-on-cancer-by-louise-orrock), June 8, 2015
PubMed, US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health, (
www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov/pubmed)
Trevor-Roper, Patrick D, Lecture Notes on Opthamology
.
Whitehead, Alfred North, Science and the Modern World (New York, The Free Press, 1967)
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