The biobusiness revolution WILL transform out lives and our economies! Our health, our cloths and materials. Our food, our energy. This week's lesson was about the biobusiness revolution. Basically anything that is "organism" related, such as the health sector, growing new genetically modified crops and making money out of these areas are classified as biobusiness. Hence we see that is indeed a very large area, with many sub topics to cover. In Dr.Shahi's words, "Economic activity of life and life processes."
Biobusiness provides for 25% global GDP, but provides for 40% of the world's labour force. This statistic struck me pretty hard. I previously thought that biobusiness, with all the glamour of doctors and surgeons, and people developing new medicines, and huge pharmaceutical companies making high profits, I wondered whether at all that would be true. However, because of this lesson, I had my predicaments turned sour. It didn't occur to me previously that biobusiness consisted of the illiterate farm workers growing the food we eat as part of it. With that thinking then, wouldn't biobusiness be thought of as being around since man learnt how to farm and trade? And not be a fairly new concept?
Back on track, biobusiness does indeed encompass health and life sciences. And this would probably be where the bulk of revolution is taking place. In the arena of health we now see more and more point of care diagnostics being developed. Common point of care diagnostics that we know of would be the pregnancy test kit, and more recently, the H1N1 test kit, where people can know whether they have caught that dreaded flu bug within a couple of hours. With Genetic engineering, researches now can also grow medicines in life stalk. In a time not too long ago, people couldn't do these things, and of course medicines were synthesized by mixing compounds together. There would be left overs for at times, only the by product of the synthesis was what they wanted and not the main product generated. This represents a great leap forward with the production of medicine. It would of course cheaper as the processes are natural.
The Biobusiness revolution is indeed huge. Many people know that deciphering the whole human genome was a significant milestone in man's history. Or a least i consider it to be. The lesson proved my instincts right. HA! With the decoding, there came a lot of business opportunities. People knew what proteins could be synthesized to cure any flaw. Pharmaceutical companies began their research to produce drugs to help solve any potential problems that came up with genetics. However there were setbacks too. Of course now insurance companies, know that some diseases that may be hereditary, now backed my scientific prove may not be willing to insure someone with a family history of it.
The development of GM food has caused much scare to skeptics. Of course there are always the alternatives to turn to. Going organic and stuff like that. With issues such as these, provides the opportunity to expands man's creativity to provide, hence also providing much business activity. Perhaps it is due to this reasons that have also driven the biobusiness revolution. Nutraceuticals are an example of this. People prefer to eat the food rich in the certain nutrients that they lack rather than just popping a pill. For example eating more red meat, and green leafy vegetables to supplement their iron intake, rather than just popping an iron supplement.
The biobusiness also expands the horizon's of man's imagination! I feel that with the new knowledge, techniques and methods acquired throughout the ages have given a man a step closer to their imagination. Creating new species, bringing back extinct species are all theoretically feasible now, however man has yet to succeed. Cloning animals now is feasible, however we have yet to confirm on the success and certainty of our techniques. All these have given much promise to the hope of genetic engineering and closer to our ambitions. Eradicating diseases, creating hybrids of more powerful humans! This only happens in the work of science fiction authors!
The presenters did a pretty good job! I enjoyed the discussions thoroughly. Perhaps more than the lessons itself :P Probably because we dwelled into the specifics and the consequences rather than the generals of the topic! I enjoyed the development of nano medicine presentation! I was like "wow" its super cool! and the consequences of us being healthier,and not to undergo painful treatments such as chemotherapy and instead just targeting the cancer cells.
Lesson would be 7/10. most part of the lessons i felt intimidated because of the broadness and scope of the subject. However the presentations and discussion gave better points!
Oh! and I just remembered a funny thing about the difference between disease management and wellness management! There is no difference! Just that disease management is about keeping diseased people well, and wellness management is keeping well people well! LOL XD
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