It was, of course, widely reported that the tennis star Djokovic refuses to get vaccinated against COVID.
Why does he insist on such a daft move?
Does he fear side effects?
No, he believes in so-called alternative medicine (SCAM)
But maybe there is another, more profane reason.
NoVax Djokovic is the main shareholder of a start-up company called ‘QuantBioRes‘. It was founded only in 2020 and aims to find cures and treatments against bacterial resistance and retroviruses, in particular Covid-19. The start-up is investigating methods of “deactivation” of Sars-CoV-2. In essence, ‘QuantBioRes’ is trying to invent a quantum-bollocks-dased SCAM that would be marketable as a replacement for the current COVID vaccines. The no vax positions of the tennis star might therefore not just be due to his love of SCAM but also to financial reasons.
It emerged that Djokovic owns an 80% stake in ‘QuantBioRes’. “At QuantBioRes, we work in utilizing unique and novel ‘Resonant Recognition Model'”. It is based on the weird notion that “certain periodicities/frequencies within the distribution of energies of free electrons along the protein are critical for protein biological function and interaction with protein receptors and other targets,” the QuantBioRes website states.
According to the Guardian, the company will “soon start testing different treatment approaches”. Prof Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and antimicrobial resistance expert, said the QuantBioRes website used “fancy terms” without providing any evidence of success of the methods it promoted. “They’ve given nothing in the way of data,” he said. “People are looking out for new molecules all the time, but the website describes a way of finding a new molecule without providing any evidence of success.”
The Guardian speculates that the treatment would be akin to homeopathy but the chief executive of QuantBioRes, Ivan Loncarevic, stated: “What we do has absolutely nothing to do with homeopathy. The theory behind homeopathy is that you can transfer information from a chemical to another substance, such as water. What we do is to develop peptides with specific functionality. This is pure, classical science. Of course we are not putting our data on our website for every idiot to look at. We will soon publish an article in a scientific journal that will collect all our clinical testing.” When asked when the article will be published, Loncarevic said: “With a little luck, in two to three months, after peer review.”
I partly agree with Ivan Loncarevic: the method looks nothing like homeopathy. It seems more akin to the Lakhovski oscillator which we discussed some time ago. Whatever it is, it seems to be based on bizarre quantum bollocks and has as much chance to be an effective cure for anything as I have in winning a grand slam.
18 Responses to NoVax Djokovic is also a SCAM entrepreneur
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It is a pity that Sars-CoV-2 is not a retrovirus but a coronavirus. So Djokovic has thrown his money out the window.
That was the first thing I thought.
And I’m still, trying to figure out the free electron thing. Technobabble at its finest.
A shame this was not more generally reported for the better understanding of all.
A clear case of ‘conflict of interest’ which should have been declared.
Novak>Novax>Novisa
Poor Novax will lose his investment, almost certain.
Drug development is hard even if you know what you’re doing. This company lacks the necessary experience.
They are not “developing a drug”–they are trying to market rubbish word salad science and will likely make a fortune, like all the other unregulated supplement manufacturers that peddle their wares in every store and pharmacy along with homeopathy and all the other useless herbs and vitamins.
That won’t bother b the millions if idiots who will pay good money for any ‘alternative’ nonsense. They’re v easily impressed by science words they don’t understand and love novelty. No doubt the company is hoping they’ve come up with the successor to homeopathy.
If they are selling anything alternative, they are quite lousy sellers. Website is hard to find, there are no media coverage (except that Novak invested peanuts in some company), product has no name, they’re even put their product in clinical trials (as per claim by QBR).
I made the mistake and went on the QuantBioRes webpage and clicked the “Discover More” button.
The pdf file that opened is simply hilarious word salad. It appears to be a kind of “pseudo journal article”, created by a scientifically ignorant person who has obviously never published a paper in a peer-reviewed journal.
It resembles something that was sloppily put together by using a search engine & the copy-and-paste function.
Just two quick quotes:
“With the latest outbreak of corona virus COVID-19 and with a number of previous retro (RNA) virus’ outbreaks like HIV, SARS and a new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China. there is the question if it is possible to design a universal retroviral vaccine or even cure. (…)”
“Corona viruses are retroviruses (…)”
Apart from the many typos (not very professional for a top-class biotech company 😉), COVID19 is NOT a virus, and SARS-CoV-2 is NOT a retrovirus. It is clear that the person who wrote this text in no expert at all in virology, immunology or even molecular biology in general.
How foolish to invest money in such a company.
From the Guardian article Edzard linked to:
QuantBioRes is based in Denmark. The one article that’s in the QuantBioRes Published Articles page has the two lead authors from AMALNA Consulting in Australia. It appears from AMALNA’s web page that ALMANA may be the source of the “resonant recognition model” that QuantBioRes is using. Anyone know what the Slovenia connection is?
The “resonant recognition model” seems to have been around for some time. The earliest paper about it in the article’s references is from 1994. I’m surprised that if it’s so good that it hasn’t already made an impact in the nearly 30 years since.
If I understand correctly, the resonant recognition model (RRM) is primarily a way to map the charge distribution along peptide chains, mostly determined by the presence of delocalized electrons(*) in the sequence of amino acids. The idea is that this one-dimensional mapping followed by a Fourier transform is an easier way to get a ‘fingerprint’ of active areas in a peptide than having to map the charge distribution over the complete 3D structure. This simplification comes at the cost of losing a lot of spatial information, as peptide chains automatically fold in ways that are often unpredictable. But apparently, this is not always a problem, especially for simpler structures. So far, so good.
*: I.e. electrons that are shared between atoms, like the 6 shared electrons in a benzene ring.
Now where things get a bit slippery is the claim that these fingerprints based on charge distribution say something about the biological activity of a peptide. This would not only involve finding matching sequences in a biological structure, but also requires compatible 3D shapes, and this is probably where this whole thing goes south: discarding most of the 3D information may make it easier (or possible in the first place) to model a certain peptide interaction, but this model will be mostly useless for actual prediction of functionality in living cells.
This is also why in the past two decades, huge resources have been pumped into efforts to predict peptide chain folding based on the sequence of amino acids and how they are added to a peptide – and this is an absolutely monumental task, further complicated by the fact that there is often more going on than just adding amino acids to a growing chain. IIRC, some peptides and proteins require helper proteins during assembly to prevent them from prematurely folding in the wrong shape, while others have several stable folding configurations, only one of which is functional – which is enforced by so-called prions. With most efforts now geared towards the protein folding puzzle, this resonant recognition model seems largely abandoned by science.
The whole QuantBioRes thing seems to hinge on this article by Irena Cosic, Drasko Cosic and Ivan Loncarevic (who is also the CEO of QuantBioRes): https://www.ijsciences.com/pub/article/2482
There appears to be some legitimate science going on in there, but it could well be that Mrs. Cosic is barking up the wrong tree with her exclusive focus on the resonant recognition model. As far as I can correctly interpret the article, Cosic is saying is that RRM can match particular mRNA fragments to proteins involved in the first steps of viral replication (which is not surprising at all), and then goes on to say that interfering at this stage could prevent viral replication. To which I say ‘Duh’.
Also, if these people want to be taken seriously, then ‘QuantBioRes’ is absolutely the worst choice of name, with a strong odour of fraudulent pseudoscience and quackery. It is also not reassuring that this ‘International Journal of Sciences’ seems so be a predatory publication with an absolutely dismal impact factor.
Then again, maybe I did not fully understand things, so any remarks and corrections to the above are welcome.
Richard, The article you linked to contains the following instances of each word:
7 could
2 may
2 possibly
19 possible
10 possibility
Little, if any, progress has been made since the publication of:
Cosic, I. (1997) The resonant recognition model of macromolecular bioactivity: theory and applications.
Prejudice
is it a “talent” that adorns another species or just human’s?
at the beginning, in the title, I see the end of your opinion. in this text you are neither a scientist, nor a pedagogue, nor an analyst. you are not engaged in science but in political acrobatics, you are not a pedagogue but a non-analytical critic.
in addition, posting offensive changes to someone’s name is ugly and not so civilized (he is not a NoVax and does not say so).
investment is a matter of personal mathematics. and you and almost all discuss and offense like an inquisition against Galileo and the like.
shame
Her I am sending you my “founding” of 5 minutes google surface search (and finally, NBA player Charles Barkley kisses donkey, as a results of prejudice, i don’t understand your metaphors with grand slam, Novak deserve each of them, beside his national origin):
Link:
https://books.google.rs/books?id=mSgGEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=irena+cosic+drasko+cosic&source=bl&ots=CsC9KQFmXL&sig=ACfU3U0aCHxYwdAwzLQdYRa9RTWDUTEtIA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiz24C5h8b1AhXXuKQKHakrA0gQ6AF6BAgZEAI#v=onepage&q=irena%20cosic%20drasko%20cosic&f=false
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Drasko-Cosic
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25438322/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27286856/
https://econpapers.repec.org/article/admjournl/v_3a9_3ay_3a2020_3ai_3a4_3ap_3a40-44.htm
https://econpapers.repec.org/article/admjournl/v_3a10_3ay_3a2021_3ai_3a1_3ap_3a1-6.htm
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Irena-Cosic
Dr Miroslav f. Besermenji
@Miroslav Besermenji
Thank you for providing links to articles of Mrs. Cosic I hadn’t found yet. These are my thoughts:
– The Resonant Recognition Model appears to be a personal pet project of Mrs. Cosic that has been abandoned by all other scientists long ago, and
– The more recent the publications, the less coherent and scientifically valid her claims appear to be.
One of these ‘EconPapers’ is particularly troubling, as it claims that Cosic’s RRM research supports the use of ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir against Covid-19, none of which have been found effective. At the very least, this means that something or someone is very wrong here.
I shall leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about this, but I think that this is something that all investors in this project should at least know about – including Mr. Djokovic.
I assume that you, Miroslav Besermenji, are incapable of reading English, which is the only explanation I can think of for anyone posting links that include this gem [my emphasis]:
QUOTE
Analysis of Protein-Receptor Interactions on an Example of Leptin-Leptin Receptor Interaction Using the Resonant Recognition Model
Irena Cosic, Vasilis Paspaliaris and Drasko Cosic
Featured Application:
The results of this research can be used in combating obesity and overweight, which are becoming increasing health problems in modern society.
Abstract:
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat may have a negative effect on health and lifestyle, and it is becoming an increasing problem within modern society. Leptin is the key protein that regulates body energy balance by inhibiting hunger, and it could potentially be used in treatment of obesity and overweight. Here, we applied our own Resonant Recognition Model, which is capable of analyzing the selectivity of any protein-receptor interaction on an example of leptin-leptin receptor. We have identified a specific characteristic parameter for leptin activity through the leptin receptor, and this parameter could be used in development of new treatments for obesity.
Conclusions
Our manuscript researched possible novel directions towards treatments of obesity by finding out indicators of leptin activity. These indicators have been identified by analyzing the specificity of leptin–leptin receptor interactions using the Resonant Recognition Model, which proposes that selective protein–protein receptor interaction is based on resonant energy transfer between interacting macromolecules. When an indicator characterizing leptin–leptin receptor interaction is identified as resonant electromagnetic radiation specific frequency, it is possible to radiate patients with this specific frequency to mimic leptin activity and subsequently control hunger and energy balance. The concept of mimicking protein activity by electromagnetic radiation of specific frequency has been already tested in the case of treatment of Crigler–Najjar syndrome by blue light, where certain frequencies of blue light can mimic the activity of healthy UDP protein [16]. In the case of obesity treatment, the calculated resonant electromagnetic radiation frequency of 727 nm, which is within red-light spectrum, is proposed here to be used to radiate patients. In future, to apply this idea to patients within clinical settings, it is necessary to identify appropriate sources of radiation and parameters of delivery.
END of QUOTE
Marvellous!
I found quite interesting that tennis player is obligated to know about biochemistry but Walgreens (Theranos), Fraizer (Raze Therapeutics) or Novartis (Laguna Pharmaceuticals) don’t. The QBR doesn’t ask you for money, doesn’t claim that they found wonder drug, they are proper registered business. Are they betting on wrong horse. I guess they do. Once they fail, nobody would remember them, only damage would be made to Novak finances.
Now, the real question is why would someone digg so deep? Is this start of wich hunt? I hope not, because people are drinking Ivermectin and sodium acid which is way bigger problem than Novak failed investment.
Playing the with hunt gambit? Oh, come on, this is so hackneyed.
“sodium acid”? What is this? I know e.g. sodium chloride, sodium hydroxide or hydrochloric acid.
Yes, I was thinking about HCl, hydrochloric acid. Thank you for correction. It is unbelievable what people are ready to put in themselves but avoiding vaccine.
Nobody would care about QBR if there isn’t Djokovic investment and 95% of talk about it is more about his beliefs than actual science. Morever, on this article, there is exactly one comment dealing with science behind RRM. Given that NDj isn’t only one tricked in investing in shady biotech startups, it does look like which hunt.
I can be totally wrong. I don’t have ability reading Novak’s mind as some other people here have.