Shaw's Eco-Logic

This HND piece uses the current COVID-19 situation to examine what happens when politics enters the already failed worlds of public health and science. It starts with a look at how and why science got ruined. Naturally, that didn't help public health.

We then segue into the bizarre paradigm whereby protests against the lockdown are evil, but much larger protests following the death of George Floyd are not only benign to health, they are even necessary. So, protecting people from catching COVID-19 is the most important public health issues, until it isn't.

Of course, in such a discussion, it is impossible to not comment on the scandalously overblown and overrated Dr. Tony Fauci—and we do.

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This HND piece puts the spotlight on an interesting approach to developing a COVID-19 vaccine: DNA medicine. The idea here is that DNA plasmids are introduced via a special device into the cell. There they trigger T cells to do their thing against the invading COVID virus. The company behind this unique approach is Inovio Pharmaceuticals.

Inovio has had some real success with MERS, caused by a related coronavirus, and initial studies look good for COVID. At present, Inovio is having some issues with one of its sub-contractors, and that is the subject of litigation, which hopefully should be resolved soon.

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This HND piece examines the emerging world of peptide supplementation. We start with a bit of biochemistry—pointing out that bioactive peptides include many hormones, antibiotics, and other compounds that participate in the metabolic functions of living organisms. A prime example is insulin, well-known to diabetics as one of the few substances that can rapidly lower blood glucose levels.

In a few cases, topical use of peptides (including collagen) and oral supplementation (creatine) are well-established. However, there are dozens of other peptides out there that are the subject of research, as well as semi-legal use by the public. The good news is that bioactive peptides are very powerful; the bad news is that bioactive peptides are very powerful.

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