posted ago by ghost_of_aswartz ago by ghost_of_aswartz +5 / -1

Caveat: First of all, don't try it. Pokeweed is poisonous. Some people know how to eat it, but it's not worth risking your life to try it. Native americans have a protocol to use a TINY amount of poisonous berries every few days to treat cancer.

OK. So where am I getting this speculation from?

First I read about the "achilles heel of the coronavirus", which happens to be the achilles heel of MANY viruses (rna viruses)--- and it's the way that RNA viruses exploit an almost impossible "glitch" in the ribosome, called a frameshift...think of it as 'gear slipping'

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2021/05/the-achilles-heel-of-the-coronavirus.html

The virus contains a weirdly folded part of their code that causes a normally exceedingly rare gear slip, the frameshift to happen regularly, so this article linked above discusses possibly targetting the viruses frameshift code.

Inhibiting frameshifting reduces viruses

The ethz.ch article mentions 'natural compounds' that inhibit viral frameshifting, but doesn't name them. I thought it was crap. So I decided to find one

And I found one

POKEWEED.

Pokeweed leaves contain "pokeweed antiviral protein" (PAP), which actually inhibits by way of targetting viral frameshifting.

Here's the thing: we have a lot in common with yeasts, but most importantly, that humans and yeasts are eukaryotes with ribosomes that act in a similar way. Molecular biology makes us more similar than it makes us different. The differences happen primarily on a much larger scale. What I'm saying is that what works for a yeast could work for a human, especially if it's a specific, universal "one trick" that RNA viruses that target different organisms use...that you're targetting.

What I'm saying is we should probably look at plants like pokeweed and the pokeweed antiviral protein as a possible treatment for COVID

But I'm not the one to do it.

I don't know how to isolate PAP. I am not a chemist. Well above my pay grade.

Guessing yours also.