A Danish “biotech” company in which Novak Djokovic has a majority stake is working on a “frequency” treatment for covid-19 that one expert says has similarities to the principles of homeopathy.
The world No. 1 male tennis player was forced to leave Australia on Sunday after the country’s immigration minister canceled his visa because his presence in Australia could lead to “civil unrest” as it is a “talisman of anti-vaccine sentiment”.
On Wednesday emerged Djokovic had acquired an 80% stake in QuantBioRes, whose website says it designs treatments for resistant viral diseases and bacteria by “predicting the electromagnetic frequency” that can interfere with the activity of a virus.
“At QuantBioRes, we work using a unique and novel Resonant Recognition Model… a biophysical model based on findings that certain periodicities/frequencies within the distribution of free electron energies throughout the protein are critical for the biological function of the protein. protein and interaction with protein receptors and other targets,” the website says.
It bears a quote from Serbian-American scientist Nikola Tesla: “If you want to understand the universe, think about energy, frequency, and vibration.”
Dr. Darren Saunders, an Australian biomedical scientist, said the approach described on the QuantBioRes website is reminiscent of homeopathy, an alternative and unproven treatment that claims disease-causing substances can, in minute doses, treat diseases. people who are not well.
Homeopaths claim that by diluting these substances in water or alcohol, the resulting mixture retains a “frequency imprint” of the original substance that triggers a healing response in the body by causing an energetic shift.
Saunders said that in his opinion it was “an exaggeration” for QuantBioRes to call itself a biotech company. “The ‘innovative technology’ they describe on their website does not reflect contemporary understanding of how biochemistry works,” Saunders said. “If any athlete or other potential investor wants advice on how not to spend their money on these things, my fee is reasonable.”
The website says the company will “soon start testing different treatment approaches”, but a link encouraging people to “learn more” appeared to be broken when The Guardian tried to access it. A link to a July 2020 announcement that QuantBioRes would test Covid-19 knockout mechanisms also appeared to be broken.
Professor Peter Collignon, an infectious disease physician and antimicrobial resistance expert, said the QuantBioRes website used “fancy terms” without providing any evidence of the success of the methods it promoted. “They haven’t given anything in terms of data,” he said. “People search for new molecules all the time, but the website describes a way to find a new molecule without providing any evidence of success.”
The executive director of QuantBioRes, Ivan Loncarevic, denied that the methods developed by his company had anything to do with homeopathy and defended the lack of data on the company’s website.
“What we do has absolutely nothing to do with homeopathy,” he said in an interview. “The theory behind homeopathy is that you can transfer information from one chemical to another substance, like water. What we do is develop peptides with specific functionality. This is pure, classic science.
“Of course we are not putting our data on our website for all the idiots to see. Soon we will publish an article in a scientific journal that will collect all our clinical trials”.
Asked when the article would be published, Loncarevic said: “Hopefully, in two or three months, after peer review.”
When asked about Saunders’ view that it was “overkill” for QuantBioRes to call itself a biotech company and that the “innovative technology” described on its site did not reflect contemporary understanding of how biochemistry worked, Loncarevic replied : “That’s because we’re innovative.” .”
He said that other engineering or science pioneers, such as Elon Musk and Galileo, had faced similar criticism when they first voiced their views. On the subject of broken links, he said it was the first time he had heard of the problem and “it’s not [done] on purpose”.
Additional reporting by Philip Oltermann in Berlin
www.theguardian.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism