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What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

blogs.sciencemag.org

141–150 of 152 posts

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#141

mRNA is the ultimate biohacking tool. You can potentially use it for weight loss by improving metabolism without exercising and a few other things.

I won't be injecting any mRNA to loose a few kilos anytime within the next multiple decades. Metabolism is complicated and there are some really nasty and weird metabolic diseases out there, based on some small regulatory feedback loop being broken. Don't fix a working system! If your weight bothers you, just go for walk or a swim once in a while. Have a salad.

> If your weight bothers you, just go for walk or a swim once in a while. Have a salad.

It is super annoying when people post crap like this, as though that's all it would take to address the obesity epidemic.

By the way, there is approximately zero effect on weight in response to "going for a walk or a swim once in a while".

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using a live human to express a protein that we normally never do is a bit of an ethical problem due to the associated risk Wait, so are you saying there's an ethical problem with triggering the expression of a strictly viral protein known to cause damage in and of itself?

There is, which is why it took so fucking long for these vaccines to get approved, they needed to be strenuously tested for safety and efficacy among tens of thousands of volunteers.

The same way nine thousand women can make a thousand babies in one month, right?

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, which is why it took so fucking long for these vaccines to get approved, they needed to be strenuously tested for safety and efficacy among tens of thousands of volunteers.

The same way nine thousand women can make a thousand babies in one month, right?

It's not the same problem because getting sick doesn't take nine months. They give X people placebo and real vaccines and then wait for enough of the placebo group to get infected living their regular lives.

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#144
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaaaand here come the downvotes from the adherents of the religion of mRNA Technology :D Scientific objectivity is LONG GONE! "With the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, protection against symptomatic COVID-19 was found to be 52% from 12 days after the first dose (immunity takes time to build). Protection then rose to 95% after the second dose." [1] "Vaccine efficacy, based on the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases from 21 d…

Perhaps because of https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/04/28/ru...

Also the adenovirus in SputnikV is apparently actually infectious.

https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/13873971863720058...

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#145
post #24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could retarget the mRNA batches tonight if it wasn't for the FDA not taking this seriously.

Uhm, it is serious if you know anything about drug development history. It always is. The current mRNA Covid vaccines have a pretty high incidence rate of ongoing rapid swelling and rashes (in the 1/100 to 1/1000 range), and it's still unclear what will happen to the hundreds of thousands of affected people. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVI... Also to be found in the adverse reacti…

VAERS reports aren't sufficient to show causation, because they just show whatever people happened to report.

It's the same reason drugs show the thing they're treating as a side effect. People are reporting the symptom because they already had it.

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't be injecting any mRNA to loose a few kilos anytime within the next multiple decades. Metabolism is complicated and there are some really nasty and weird metabolic diseases out there, based on some small regulatory feedback loop being broken. Don't fix a working system! If your weight bothers you, just go for walk or a swim once in a while. Have a salad.

> If your weight bothers you, just go for walk or a swim once in a while. Have a salad. It is super annoying when people post crap like this, as though that's all it would take to address the obesity epidemic. By the way, there is approximately zero effect on weight in response to "going for a walk or a swim once in a while".

I have lost 5 kg since january going from ~102kg to ~97kg. This has happened from two changes: going for a run 2-3 times per week and reducing the amount of cake I eat. I still have fries with mayonnaise with my hamburgers.

I acknowledge that there is an issue around cheap food being unhealthy food and people being forced to eat chips for lunch for financial reasons, but for anyone in the middle class or above I really don't understand why it's more complicated than 'move more, eat less'.

It's hard. But it's not complicated.

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#147
post #98
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why both are called drugs in English. My language also has the word "drugs" but it's used exclusively for street drugs.

Drugs having to be government approved is a relatively recent development. Perhaps about a hundred years, give or take. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Opium_Convention The English language just hasn't caught on, yet. At least not completely. In eg German, people generally differentiate between Medikamente and Drogen, but they still have a Drogerie which is essentially the same as a drug store.

Same in France. "Médicament" is what you get from your doctor and "drogue" is what you get from your dealer.

As for the shops, the one that sells prescription and over-the-counter drugs is called "pharamacie", the next tier is "parapharamacie", which sells vitamins, essential oils, hygiene products, etc... "Drogueries" are actually hardware stores.

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that I read you comment I remember having seen this pharmacy within the drug store thing. I also remember that the lady there gave sort of medical advice to the customers and that I wondered if she was an MD or not.

That's a whole other discussion about the nature of pharmacies too. The pharmacists themselves have specific degrees and I always assume they're more knowledgeable about things like drug interactions than even the prescribing doctors, if that's the kind of medical advice you mean. One probably works with pharmacy technicians at the desk though; I'm not sure about their qualifications. At the very least the techs can…

In Germany, pharmacies have specific legal monopolies, and weird regulations, eg that forbid running a pharmacy chain. (It's a bit like unit banking in the US of yore.)

The pharmacists' lobby always defends them with 'oh, you need a proper pharmacist in a pharmacy to give people proper advice'. But whenever some intrepid journalist goes and tests the actual advice given by pharmacies in some bout of investigative journalism, the majority of pharmacies tested always fail dramatically.

Re: What mRNA is good for, and what it maybe isn’t

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, which is why it took so fucking long for these vaccines to get approved, they needed to be strenuously tested for safety and efficacy among tens of thousands of volunteers.

The same way nine thousand women can make a thousand babies in one month, right?

There's a point to be made that we are pushing the vaccine into millions of arms without knowing the long-term effects of them. Having studied them for over a year, all of the data points to the vaccines being safe for 99.999% of people who take them. It would be great to have some kind of time compression machine and be able to see the long-term effects -- say 10 years out -- but at some point the evidence of safety is strong enough that we decide pandemic risk >> vaccine risk.
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