Mechanism and evidence
The chain of events claimed for this treatment, where it stops being established biology, and what the published record can and cannot establish.
The mechanism proposed for polynucleotide treatment is coherent. Coherence is not demonstration. This chapter separates the two, describes the evidence base by its shape rather than by invented figures, and sets out at length what is not known.
What a polynucleotide chain is
A polynucleotide is a chain of nucleotide units. Each nucleotide carries a five carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base, and the units are joined in sequence by phosphodiester bonds linking the phosphate of one unit to the sugar of the next. The chain therefore has a direction, conventionally read from its 5 prime end to its 3 prime end, and the order of the bases along it is what carries information. DNA and RNA are the familiar biological examples. Both are polynucleotides, and what separates them is the sugar and which bases appear.
That is the whole of the biochemical definition and it is settled. Nothing in it concerns skin, injection or treatment. A material can be correctly described as a polynucleotide and still tell a reader nothing about what a finished product contains, how long its chains are, what it is authorised to do, or what happens to it after it is injected.
The same word does three different jobs
On a treatment page the word is usually doing duty as all three at once: a molecular description, a name for a category of injectable material, and shorthand for a proposed effect. The first is settled biochemistry, as above. The second varies by product and is not standardised, so it does not by itself establish what is in the syringe. The third is a claim, and claims are what this chapter exists to examine. Which of the surrounding terms are molecular, which are regulatory and which describe a treatment plan is set out term by term in the polynucleotide and regenerative injectable glossary.
What the published record does and does not establish is kept separately and by name in the evidence register, so a claim can be checked against the record rather than against the wording of the page making it.
- 2.1The claimed mechanism, step by step
The story told about how this treatment works is coherent. Coherence is not the same as demonstration, and the two are worth separating link by link.
- 2.2The shape of the evidence
You can learn most of what you need to know about a body of research without reading a single result, by looking at what kind of studies it contains.
- 2.3What is not known
This is the central article of the document. Everything else in it is arranged around the question of which claims have been established and which have not.
- 2.4Reading a study a clinic quotes at you
You will sometimes be handed a paper, a summary, or a slide with a citation on it. Here is what to look at, in what order, and what each finding means.
- 2.5Why we publish no numbers
The figures quoted in this category are its least reliable output. This article explains the policy that follows from that, because a reader is entitled to know why a reference is withholding something.
- 2.6Laboratory findings and people
A great deal of what is said about this treatment originates in a dish. That is a legitimate place for it to originate and a poor place for it to stop.
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