How many of their potential customers do you think are capable of asking enough "technical questions" to satisfy their concerns? You're missing several important ones yourself, and you're probably better qualified than ~100% of the people who've already received Minicircle's "treatment".
Here's a couple freebies: minicircles might be 10x more effective than regular plasmids, but how effective were those regular plasmids? No one is questioning the *potential* of follistatin, but try to find a study were the animals weren't genetically engineered to have the gene in every cell in their body, or injected with eye-watering levels of AAV (a somewhat more effective vector than plasmids).
Researchers rarely if ever do head-to-head comparisons of the two, though in this case it's like comparing a matchbox car to a Ferrari so I can't blame them. AAV follistatin isn't really practical in humans either, though check out Bioviva if you want to believe. They're kind of the ur-Minicircle. Fun fact: Bioviva wholly sponsored the recent paper claiming follistatin increases lifespan 30% which Minicircle and Bryan Johnson happily parrot.
I said it's not practical, not that it wouldn't work.
If someone wants to actually do it, by spending millions of dollars manufacturing the dose and undergoing a medical procedure akin to an organ transplant (along with some severe potential long-term risks) then they could probably get enough extra follistatin to see a muscle boost. Or they could just take some steroids instead and see a superior effect.
You don't just stick a gene into an AAV or plasmid box, there's about a million other factors involved. Comparing the two quantitatively isn't as simple as that.
For plasmids - if you're willing to get stabbed and electrocuted about a thousand times, you might briefly see the follistatin levels Minicircle is claiming. I.e. not enough to do anything beyond a placebo.
Well, as the founder of a science-based therapy clinic (granted, it is an across-the-border dodgy one) I would not list on my LinkedIn profile a 200 hr Kundalini Yoga certification, like the founder of MiniCircle has. This fact by default should give anyone in their right mind pause as to the type of rigorous scientific practice they run there!
I commented yesterday but it isn't here - re-posting:
Huh now I feel like maybe I should make a public statement. It would be a longer version of:
“I like and respect Max, he’s brilliant and knowledgeable and coming at this with a pure heart. And also, his take is simply incompatible with my direct experience of unmistakeable, unexpected results (sudden huge cardio improvement after a week when I was only expecting to get swole faster). To contribute I am getting V02 max data on myself as I switch off and on the treatment, also Max & I are figuring out if I can do lots of blood tests on myself.
I appreciate Max’s informed skepticism because I wouldn’t want to live in a world where new things were accepted without critical review, and I appreciate Minicircle’s innovative treatment because I love living in a time that regularly produces inventions so awesome that it’s hard to believe they could be real.”
I think it is a great idea on their part to try and get Bryan Johnston to take it. I bet he actually won't, at least not until further studies are done, but if he did that would be a bit of a universal panacea, in the eyes of quite a few consumers, for the many potential ills cited by yourself and some of the commenters.
Whether that is really the most responsible way to do medical science is a question I leave to others. Personally I think that there is a lot of room for a bit more risk taking and as this seems unlikely to target people who we should particularly care about in this context (i.e. the particularly desperate or particularly cognitively impaired) I wish them luck!
Doesn't really come across in the article but my understanding is that Minicircle (the company) has to perform multiple injections all over the body as minicircles, as delivered by Minicircle, do not travel far in the body. Think this is quite different to other gene delivery methods. There is risk of mosaicism at a local and organismal level from this method which could have negative health or aesthetics effects. Though, IMO and from what i have heard, the dosing is probably too low for significant effects good or bad. Maybe they'll try higher doses if safety looks okay. Presumably immune response becomes a significant risk though.
Ummm, yeah I've a few questions about the research they conducted using tetracycline as the "stop" method.🤨🤔😐🤦♀️. As in I'd like to see it, read it, disect it, and then have a think about mass scale use on a long term cycle of antibiotic use (assuming it's a 1 and done, or a continued dosage for life🤔), and then stop and consider it again, from a antimicrobial resistance context.😐😐🤨🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
They can dress it up however they like but at the end of the day, polymers (natural and synthetic) are essentially nanoparticulates (for lack of a better word) that have effects in the body that they have no concept of, because the old saying, "you don't know what you don't know". Besides, even natural ones like rubber or the bug one for shellac, these are all substances that do NOT belong at a molecular level in the human body.😐 I'd really like nanopathology to be taught as a subject in high school biology, so the scientists of tomorrow stop believing their own hype🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
How many of their potential customers do you think are capable of asking enough "technical questions" to satisfy their concerns? You're missing several important ones yourself, and you're probably better qualified than ~100% of the people who've already received Minicircle's "treatment".
Here's a couple freebies: minicircles might be 10x more effective than regular plasmids, but how effective were those regular plasmids? No one is questioning the *potential* of follistatin, but try to find a study were the animals weren't genetically engineered to have the gene in every cell in their body, or injected with eye-watering levels of AAV (a somewhat more effective vector than plasmids).
Do you have any good references for quantitatively comparing plasmid vs AAV gene transfer?
Researchers rarely if ever do head-to-head comparisons of the two, though in this case it's like comparing a matchbox car to a Ferrari so I can't blame them. AAV follistatin isn't really practical in humans either, though check out Bioviva if you want to believe. They're kind of the ur-Minicircle. Fun fact: Bioviva wholly sponsored the recent paper claiming follistatin increases lifespan 30% which Minicircle and Bryan Johnson happily parrot.
Yeah I saw that was a bioviva paper.
I'm just trying to get a quantitative sense of how much better AAV is vs plasmids.
Why do you think AAV follistatin doesn't work in humans?
I said it's not practical, not that it wouldn't work.
If someone wants to actually do it, by spending millions of dollars manufacturing the dose and undergoing a medical procedure akin to an organ transplant (along with some severe potential long-term risks) then they could probably get enough extra follistatin to see a muscle boost. Or they could just take some steroids instead and see a superior effect.
You don't just stick a gene into an AAV or plasmid box, there's about a million other factors involved. Comparing the two quantitatively isn't as simple as that.
For plasmids - if you're willing to get stabbed and electrocuted about a thousand times, you might briefly see the follistatin levels Minicircle is claiming. I.e. not enough to do anything beyond a placebo.
💯👍😉
Well, as the founder of a science-based therapy clinic (granted, it is an across-the-border dodgy one) I would not list on my LinkedIn profile a 200 hr Kundalini Yoga certification, like the founder of MiniCircle has. This fact by default should give anyone in their right mind pause as to the type of rigorous scientific practice they run there!
I commented yesterday but it isn't here - re-posting:
Huh now I feel like maybe I should make a public statement. It would be a longer version of:
“I like and respect Max, he’s brilliant and knowledgeable and coming at this with a pure heart. And also, his take is simply incompatible with my direct experience of unmistakeable, unexpected results (sudden huge cardio improvement after a week when I was only expecting to get swole faster). To contribute I am getting V02 max data on myself as I switch off and on the treatment, also Max & I are figuring out if I can do lots of blood tests on myself.
I appreciate Max’s informed skepticism because I wouldn’t want to live in a world where new things were accepted without critical review, and I appreciate Minicircle’s innovative treatment because I love living in a time that regularly produces inventions so awesome that it’s hard to believe they could be real.”
I think it is a great idea on their part to try and get Bryan Johnston to take it. I bet he actually won't, at least not until further studies are done, but if he did that would be a bit of a universal panacea, in the eyes of quite a few consumers, for the many potential ills cited by yourself and some of the commenters.
Whether that is really the most responsible way to do medical science is a question I leave to others. Personally I think that there is a lot of room for a bit more risk taking and as this seems unlikely to target people who we should particularly care about in this context (i.e. the particularly desperate or particularly cognitively impaired) I wish them luck!
Doesn't really come across in the article but my understanding is that Minicircle (the company) has to perform multiple injections all over the body as minicircles, as delivered by Minicircle, do not travel far in the body. Think this is quite different to other gene delivery methods. There is risk of mosaicism at a local and organismal level from this method which could have negative health or aesthetics effects. Though, IMO and from what i have heard, the dosing is probably too low for significant effects good or bad. Maybe they'll try higher doses if safety looks okay. Presumably immune response becomes a significant risk though.
Ummm, yeah I've a few questions about the research they conducted using tetracycline as the "stop" method.🤨🤔😐🤦♀️. As in I'd like to see it, read it, disect it, and then have a think about mass scale use on a long term cycle of antibiotic use (assuming it's a 1 and done, or a continued dosage for life🤔), and then stop and consider it again, from a antimicrobial resistance context.😐😐🤨🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
They can dress it up however they like but at the end of the day, polymers (natural and synthetic) are essentially nanoparticulates (for lack of a better word) that have effects in the body that they have no concept of, because the old saying, "you don't know what you don't know". Besides, even natural ones like rubber or the bug one for shellac, these are all substances that do NOT belong at a molecular level in the human body.😐 I'd really like nanopathology to be taught as a subject in high school biology, so the scientists of tomorrow stop believing their own hype🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️