Schneider Shorts of 13 August 2021: new Operation Cytokine Storm – the sequel, the REAL origin of COVID-19, News in Brief from China, new Nature Shit journal with new study on stool transplants against old age, Russians can bullshit, too, and a demented old man in Marseille with Vicks VapoRub up his nose.
Table of Discontent
COVID-19
- Mad in Marseille
- Israeli Scientists Jokes: Operation Cytokine Storm continues!
- Lab Leak Theory: Chinese Communist Party reveals the Truth!
Science Breakthroughs
- New Anti-Aging Shit, or “The Irish Treatment”
- Made in Russia, all brain diseases solved!
Research Disintegrity
- Soo not OK Lee: Elsevier generously allows a retraction
- Anti-Smoking fraud?
News in Brief, China Edition
COVID-19
Mad in Marseille
The IHU Marseille director Didier Raoult lost his marbles completely, must be the governmental pressure in France to get vaccinated which the old loon staunchly resists. L’Express quotes the chloroquine guru about his latest video message:
“The number of molecules that are accumulating, that have an activity against this virus, which cost nothing and which are harmless is considerable. What are we waiting for to test them? Not the hydroxychloroquine, I don’t care (…) There is a reservoir of molecules “, indicates the professor before citing the different products.” Test cyclosporine, ivermectin … Paraffin in the nose, petroleum jelly in the nose that we have in some products, I don’t know, the Vicks … Does that prevent contamination by the virus in the nose, or not? ”
Israeli Scientists Jokes
You may recall my article Operation Cytokine Storm, where genius Israeli professors discover the cures for COVID-19, which just happen to be the same medicines they tried to peddle for various other, rather unrelated diseases before the pandemic struck.
Well, here is an update on two of them.
First, Nadir Arber, the embarrassing clown at the already embarrassing Tel Aviv University circus, who managed to get all Israeli media, plus Israeli government, and even the then prime minister Bibi Netanyahu push his EXO-CD24 nasal spray quackery miracle cure, and fix a deal with the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to finance and run a clinical trial with Arber’s EXO-CD24 in Greece. Officially because there are not enough COVID-19 patients in Israel, if you believe that.
Now, The Times of Israel celebrates the nearing end of the pandemic:
“The Israeli inventor of a “precision medicine” for COVID-19 is “very optimistic,” after an 88-person hospital trial entered its final day without a single patient ending up on a ventilator.
The next phase of the drug trial will see a trial performed with some in a group given a placebo.
After a first trial in Israel, this trial, which will wrap up on Tuesday, is taking place in Greece, sponsored by the government in Athens, involving moderate and serious patients aged up to 85.”
Yes, the trial was unblinded open-label without a control arm. This was the registered trial NCT04902183, it had two arms for two different EXO-CD24 doses and 90 participants, not 88 as celebrated, meaning 2 were removed, maybe for refusing to get cured.
If you are concerned which incompetent moron ran that garbage of a clinical trial, Prof Arber “stressed that he was not involved in running the trial, which was conducted by Greek doctors and overseen by Dr. Sotiris Tsiodras, the national coronavirus commissioner for Greece.”
The other Israeli Genius I wrote about, Yaakov Nahmias of the Hebrew University, is running a COVID-19 phase 3 clinical trial of his own. Not with his other business of lab-grown meat, but with fenofibrate. This was celebrated in Israeli media as well, because some other, non-Israeli scientists published an in vitro study in Frontiers:
Scott P. Davies , Courtney J. Mycroft-West , Isabel Pagani , Harriet J. Hill , Yen-Hsi Chen , Richard Karlsson , Ieva Bagdonaite , Scott E. Guimond , Zania Stamataki , Marcelo Andrade De Lima , Jeremy E. Turnbull , Zhang Yang , Elisa Vicenzi , Mark A. Skidmore , Farhat L. Khanim , Alan Richardson The Hyperlipidaemic Drug Fenofibrate Significantly Reduces Infection by SARS-CoV-2 in Cell Culture Models Frontiers in Pharmacology (2021) doi: 10.3389/fphar.2021.660490
Nahmias needs some media attention, his own pharma-sponsored clinical trial with fenofibrate at the Barzilai Medical Center (NCT04661930) was last reported to be “recruiting” in December 2020 and hasn’t posted any updates since. The goal was to recruit merely 50 patients. Guess there is indeed no COVID-19 in Israel, as Arber also found out. Or maybe Israeli regulatory authorities are more competent than Israeli politicians.
Lab Leak Theory
Even China now understood that a zoonotic origin of COVID-19 is become a less likely theory, given the utter absence to all clues regarding any host animals. So now also the Chinese Communist Party embraced the lab leak theory as the most likely possibility. No, not from the prime suspect, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Chinese state media now calls for the investigation of the real culprit:
“Alongside the infamous Fort Detrick lab, a biological laboratory at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, led by well-known US coronavirus expert Ralph Baric, has become the focus of public suspicion in the search for the origins of COVID-19, with many observers pointing to its poor safety record and unwillingness of researchers to speak publicly. Ralph Baric’s team is the authority when it comes to [coronavirus] research, with widely recognized capability in synergizing and modifying coronaviruses, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, urging the US to invite World Health Organization (WHO) experts to investigate the UNC facility. “A probe into Baric’s team and lab would clarify whether coronavirus research has created or will create SARS-CoV-2,” Zhao said during a press conference in late July.
The international community clearly views the US, which has been hyping up the “lab-leak theory” and engaging in groundless attacks against China, as a major suspect responsible for leaking COVID-19, one insider told the Global Times.”
As a reminder, Ralph Baric is the former collaborator of WIV’s Batwoman, Shi Zhengli. The UNC Chapel Hill virologist became China’s state enemy overnight in May 2021, when he signed an open letter in Science (Bloom et al 2021) calling for a proper investigation of COVID-19 origins which would include WIV and other Wuhan research institutions.
So now China says Baric in USA is the one who unleashed SARS-CoV2 upon the humanity. How did it get to emerge in Wuhan first? Well, check with the WHO-China investigation earlier this year, led by Shi Zhengli’s buddy and money-man Peter Daszak, where a “cold chain” (aka frozen red herring) theory was postulated, about the coronavirus being smuggled into China via frozen fish imports from USA or Europe. Which would imply that Baric, Pentagon, CIA, Illuminati and the Lizard People all sneaked into a US fish processing factory one night in late 2019 and contaminated the China-destined salmon shipment with their SARS-CoV2 bioweapon, all with the sole purpose to frame and discredit China because this is how envious of the Chinese communism’s success story they are.
The only hypothesis which is truly an insane tin-hattery, rabidly anti-science paranoia and an Neonazi racist conspiracy theory is that the pandemic virus escaped from WIV or another Wuhan lab. Where just coincidentally the gain-of-function coronavirus research was done, where countless virus samples from bats and even live bats were kept, and where SARS-like coronaviruses were genetically modified for the purpose of bioengineering the next Nature paper.
In this regard, US secret services somehow obtained a Chinese virus database which might include theWIV virus records which mysteriously went offline in September 2019, and disappeared into a void, never to be shared with anyone, including the WHO. CNN reports:
“US intelligence agencies are digging through a treasure trove of genetic data that could be key to uncovering the origins of the coronavirus — as soon as they can decipher it. This giant catalog of information contains genetic blueprints drawn from virus samples studied at the lab in Wuhan, China which some officials believe may have been the source of the Covid-19 outbreak, multiple people familiar with the matter tell CNN. It’s unclear exactly how or when US intelligence agencies gained access to the information, but the machines involved in creating and processing this kind of genetic data from viruses are typically connected to external cloud-based servers — leaving open the possibility they were hacked, sources said.”
The problem is that the US spies now need virology and genomics experts who are both security cleared and speak fluent Mandarin to analyse that database.
Science Breakthroughs
New Anti-Aging Shit
I have excellent news. Scientific progress is striding ahead, who knew we will live to see such developments happen. Until now, old gits had to pay some penniless youths to tap their young blood for the purpose of the rejuvenation of old, frail, but obscenely rich bodies (here Smut Clyde’s take). But now someone in Ireland published a breakthrough paper that a stool transplant from a young person will do the job.
Here a press release from University College Cork (UCC):
“Research from APC Microbiome Ireland (APC) at University College Cork (UCC) published today in the leading international scientific journal Nature Aging introduces a novel approach to reverse aspects of aging-related deterioration in the brain and cognitive function via the microbes in the gut.”
I didn’t know Nature Aging was prestigious, in fact I didn’t know it existed. Must have been launched in the last months, together with an entire swarm of new pay-to-publish Nature-themed trash journals. Guess Nature Shit was not ready to take submissions yet. Well, here is the groundbreaking study where old mice were shoved faeces from young mice up their bums, and became miraculously smart and rejuvenated.
Marcus Boehme, Katherine E. Guzzetta, Thomaz F. S. Bastiaanssen, Marcel van de Wouw, Gerard M. Moloney, Andreu Gual-Grau, Simon Spichak, Loreto Olavarría-Ramírez, Patrick Fitzgerald, Enrique Morillas, Nathaniel L. Ritz, Minal Jaggar, Caitlin S. M. Cowan, Fiona Crispie, Francisco Donoso, Evelyn Halitzki, Marta C. Neto, Marzia Sichetti, Anna V. Golubeva, Rachel S. Fitzgerald, Marcus J. Claesson, Paul D. Cotter, Olivia F. O’Leary, Timothy G. Dinan, John F. Cryan. Microbiota from young mice counteracts selective age-associated behavioral deficits Nature Aging (2021) doi: 10.1038/s43587-021-00093-9
We learn that the last author “J.F.C. has been an invited speaker at meetings organized Precision Biotics, Alkermes and Janssen and has received research funding from Cremo, Nutricia, DuPont (IFF) and a consultant for Alkermes and Nestlé.” The man has now been promoted by UCC:
The press release continues:
“Prof John F. Cryan, says “Previous research published by the APC and other groups internationally has shown that the gut microbiome plays a key role in aging and the aging process. This new research is a potential game-changer, as we have established that the microbiome can be harnessed to reverse age-related brain deterioration. We also see evidence of improved learning ability and cognitive function.””
This scientific breakthrough predictably made news worldwide, surely stool transplants clinics are opening as you read this. Take it from the highest science authority, Science:
“The hippocampus of old mice—a region of the brain associated with learning and memory—became more physically and chemically similar to the hippocampus of young mice. The old mice that received young mouse poop also learned to solve mazes faster and were better at remembering the maze layout on subsequent attempts, the team reports today in Nature Aging. None of these effects was seen in old mice given old mouse feces”
I suggest to call it “The Irish Treatment”. Cryan is quoted:
“It’s almost like … we could press the rewind button on the aging process“.
No shit, John.
Made in Russia
The English-language media is all about American, British, occasionally Australian or as above, Irish bullshit. Now it gets a bit more inclusive, here are some bonkers claims from Russia, about miracle cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and all other brain diseases. A press release from Ural Federal University:
“Russian scientists have synthesized chemical compounds that can stop the degeneration of neurons in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other severe brain pathologies. These substances can provide a breakthrough in the treatment of neurodegenerative pathologies.
New molecules of pyrrolyl- and indolylazine classes activate intracellular mechanisms to combat one of the main causes of “aged” brain diseases – an excess of so-called amyloid structures that accumulate in the human brain with age. […]
“Our compounds activate the synthesis of specific heat shock proteins and cause their accumulation in the cell,” said research co-author, professor of the Department of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry at UrFU Irina Utepova. “Proteins of this type make it possible to protect neuronal tissue from an excess of toxic amyloids and to protect cells from various types of stress, including proteotoxic stress characteristic of neurodegenerative diseases.” […]
The obtained compounds were tested in cellular models of Alzheimer’s disease and secondary injuries after traumatic brain injury. In both cases, the new substances demonstrated a significant therapeutic effect, increasing the survival of neuronal cells. The most effective compound has been tested in living tissues of rats with secondary injuries after traumatic brain injury.
According to scientists, the use of pyrrolylazine in rehabilitation therapy allowed the animals to avoid the appearance of movement disorders and degeneration of hippocampal neurons. The research team has been continued to study the mechanism of action of new compounds and is preparing for their preclinical testing.”
This is the paper, paywalled, and that certain Russian cite doesn’t have a copy because Sci-Hub isn’t uploading any new Elsevier material due to a lawsuit in India.
Elizaveta A. Dutysheva, Irina A. Utepova, Maria A. Trestsova, Alexander S. Anisimov, Valery N. Charushin, Oleg N. Chupakhin, Boris A. Margulis, Irina V. Guzhova and Vladimir F. Lazarev, Synthesis and approbation of new neuroprotective chemicals of pyrrolyl- and indolylazine classes in a cell model of Alzheimer’s disease (2021), European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.
DOI: 10.1016/j.ejmech.2021.113577
So we can trust the press release that the cure for all brain diseases is found and ready to go, thanks to Russian scientists in the Ural mountains. Only fair, American bullshitters do this all the time.
Research Disintegrity
Soo Not OK Lee!
Soo Ok Lee and her colleagues at University of Rochester Medical School finally retract at least one paper. Smut Clyde and I wrote about the case before, I also informed the School of Medical, which Vice Dean for Research announced an investigation.
This is the retracted paper:
Rongying Zhu, Xiaodong Yang, Xiang Xue, Mingjing Shen, Feng Chen, Xiaodong Chen, Ying Tsai, Peter C. Keng, Yongbing Chen, Soo Ok Lee, Yuhchyau Chen. Neuroendocrine differentiation contributes to radioresistance development and metastatic potential increase in non-small cell lung cancer,Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) (2018) doi: 10.1016/j.bbamcr.2018.09.005
This is the retraction note, indicating that Elsevier’s and its editors’ usual policy is to do exactly nought until the authors personally beg for a retraction:
“This article has been retracted at the request of the authors and their institute. The BBA Editor-in-Chief has agreed to retract the paper.
In this paper, there were two errors identified to the journal by the authors: The first error was in Western blot gel band images of Fig. 4A (p-MAPK, MAPK, p-Erk, and Stat3) and the 8 gel band images of Fig. 4G. The second error was in the cell culture images of Figures 3F, 3J, and 4E. The authors state that these errors were due to uploading mistakes in the preparation of the manuscript. The authors apologize for these errors and any inconvenience caused.
The Editor-in-Chief initially agreed to retract the paper based on the identification of these two errors. Readers are able to see further discussion of the paper on the PubPeer site here: https://pubpeer.com/publications/569EB2CE7A7335D7F3F8F3FF310936“
Anti-Smoking Fraud?
Undark has the story about the retired UC San Francisco professor and anti-tobacco activist Stanton Glantz, whom colleagues now accuse of research misconduct in his research on tobacco vaping (e-cigs) and smoking in general. One of his papers on vaping was retracted, several other criticised by peers.
“In recent years, however, as a contentious debate over electronic cigarettes has fractured the community of tobacco researchers, many of Glantz’s former allies have turned on the 75-year-old scientist. His critics accuse him of exaggerating the dangers of e-cigarettes and downplaying their benefits. They say that his research into vaping has been driven by politics, not science. Some are even revisiting doubts about his earlier work, saying that his contempt for the cigarette manufacturers — and his activism against them — tainted his influential research into the dangers of secondhand smoke.
In the unkindest cut of all, these critics say that Glantz has become an unwitting ally of the tobacco industry. He has become one of “Big Tobacco’s little helpers,””
Problem is, the e-cig makers aren’t honest themselves. New York Times reported in July 2021:
“Juul has not made its 125,000-page application to [FDA] public. But it paid $51,000 to have the entire May/June issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior devoted to publishing 11 studies funded by the company offering evidence that Juul products help smokers quit. (A spokesman for Juul said the editors had rejected one of the company’s submissions.) That fee included an extra $6,500 to have the subscription journal open access to everyone.
Three editorial board members of the journal resigned over the arrangement.
And Juul’s federal lobbying has remained robust. It spent $3.9 million on federal lobbying in 2020, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political spending. Altria, the big tobacco company that owns a chunk of Juul, spent nearly $11 million.”
News in Brief, China Edition
- NZZ in English writes about a Swiss PhD student at the University of St Gallen went to study environmental pollution in Wuhan, China, supervised by a St Gallen professor. When pandemic hit, the student got stuck in Switzerland, opened a Twitter account with 10 followers and posted some tweets critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Right away, his PhD advisor (unnamed, probably she threatened to sue) told the student she ceases their supervisory relationship because of Chinese complaints of his “neo-Nazi” activities, as not to endanger her own collaborations with China. The university erased the student from all records and deleted his email. Luckily, the student’s father deployed lawyers and apparently also journalists (hattip Tiger BB8).
- The Xuzhou Industrial Technology Research Institute seeks to recruit a full-time research assistant (hattip Tiger BB8). Requirements are an MSc degree and experience in molecular cell biology, and here is the key bit: “CCP members are preferred“. Apparently, only true communists are able to do proper cancer research. Also Chinese Communist Party members won’t squeal when dealing with blatant research fraud and paper mills, plus they are also much more likely to get funded.
- Elsevier apparently teamed up with an academically-run paper mill in a Chinese university to publish “research” on Traditional Chinese Medicine, in pay-to-publish Open Access ($1600 a pop). Chinese news reporting: “Elsevier cooperates with the Zhejiang University of Traditional Chinese Medicine to launch a new open access journal Clinical Complementary Medicine and Pharmacology, Now we invite authors to contribute!” (Hattip Tiger BB8).
- Hindawi published a paper on acupuncture which scientifically proves meridians do exist, anatomically even (hattip John Chen). Li et al 2021 is titled “In Vivo Visualization of the Pericardium Meridian with Fluorescent Dyes“, where the authors took 15 human “healthy volunteers“, injected them with “two fluorescent dyes—fluorescein sodium and indocyanine green (ICG)—into the dermal layer both at acupuncture points“, and observed the visualised meridians “on the forearm with a laser beam of wavelength 455 nm“. The scholars behind this study are from the TCM research lab of the Chinese energy company ENN and the “Institute of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences“, but the last author Andrew Ahn is affiliated with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, so shut up, science has spoken.
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For Better Science 
Twitter has recently removed as well the shadow account / backup account of covid denialist Simon Goddek. Copy/pasted from a posting by Simon Goddek at https://archive.is/MZEvD :
“Techno-fascism is real. After my first Twitter account, @goddeketal (50k followers), got suspended without providing me with a reason, my backup account (15k followers) [@goddeksineal] also got suspended now. Twitter is a fascist platform that doesn’t allow scientists to present and discuss findings. Dissidents, in general, get muzzles and oppressed. And there is nothing one can do against these bans as they state that as a private company, they decide who is allowed to get a voice on their platform. It’s nerve-wracking and simply unfair. P.S. The Dutch organisation Viruswaarheid paid a lawyer to get back my first account, but unfortunately, they recently decided to refrain from helping me. P.P.S. Pseudoscientists and notorious liars such as Karl Lauterbach, Peter Hotez, Christian Drosten, Neil Ferguson, Leana Wen etc. don’t have to fear anything. They spread misinformation on a daily level and Twitter simply tolerates their anti-democratic behavior.”
Copy/pasted from a posting of the next day at https://archive.is/MZEvD (an archived version of the Telegram account of Simon Goddek): “Boarding time! ✈️ I’m now flying with KLM from Amsterdam to Dystopia. The flight is quite empty, and the only passengers are Chinese psy-op aliens. 🇨🇳👩🏻🚀 I have a medical exemption certificate for masks (a real one!). I got into trouble several times during the check-in and boarding process. Airport security calling the police, gate personnel double and triple-checking my PCR test (QR code scanning) and eventually the most annoying experience: One KLM steward, who also claimed to be a nurse, told me that he thought my certificate was fake. He said that it’s irresponsible not to wear a mask, and I’d put everybody around me in danger. He said that he had similar medical issues and still would wear a mask to protect himself and others. “Rules are there to be followed by everybody.” They eventually accepted it. But nothing of this makes sense. Soon all PCR-tested Chinese astronauts will eat like pigs, acting for several minutes as if the virus wasn’t active while consuming food. What a clown show! 🤡”
Also covid denialist Willem Engel and the girlfriend of Willem Engel have a comparable medical exemption certificate. Copy/pasted from https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/parket-wil-zaak-engel-en-van-ranst-naar-andere-rechtbank-aanhangers-gooien-met-stoelen-in-cafe~ab7ee3a0/ “Engel en zijn vriendin worden bij de ingang van de rechtbank tegengehouden omdat ze weigeren een mondkapje op te zetten. Na enig gesteggel over een medische verklaring mogen ze toch naar binnen.”
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Another Soo Ok Lee’s retracted paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1388198121000743?via%3Dihub
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If the virus came from a gain-of-function lab-leak, there should still be a close precursor, so the lack of a close precursor isn’t very informative wrt zoonotic origin vs lab-leak.
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