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Deplorable California Refugee's avatar

It sounds like this drug is exactly what the left needs to continue the fear narrative indefinitely. Look for it to get a EUA post-haste.

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JRob's avatar

Mark, I must thank you for staying on top of the coronadoom story. You are one of two blog sites that I check daily for info that I can't find anywhere else. The breath of your reading is impressive.

Several days ago, I commented here on Molnupiravir by saying that it's just another nucleotide analog enzyme inhibitor that may or may not be toxic, depending on its' chemical and kinetic characteristics. From the stories you quote today, it appears that it's an effective anti-viral because it escapes viral proofreading, which is a key element of the chemical mechanism.

The other half of the equation is the rate of proofreading and incorporation into host DNA. Humans have both nuclear and mitochondrial polymerases. Depending on the partitioning of the drug between nuclear or mitochondrial sites, the effects may be significantly different.

Cancer would most likely result from nuclear effects if the drug escapes proofreading during human genomic replication in cells with significant genomic DNA synthesis. Mitochondrial effects would be more likely to be toxic, but not cancerous, because the entire mitochondrial genome is much smaller and turns over completely in a matter of hours and days. In other words, mutations in mitochondrial DNA would not cause cell proliferation.

I'm still hesitant to embrace the scare-mongering over cancer because I haven't seen any data, but it's certainly a plausible idea, depending, as I have said, on the chemical kinetics and specificity with human polymerases.

I just wish I wasn't retired and that I could still go behind the paywalls to read the actual science with an institutional literature account. Better yet, I wish I could get paid to write about the coronadoom science!

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