Session 6- BioBusiness?! The Revolution

What is Bio business? The commercial activity based on an understanding of life sciences and its processes. In today’s TWC, Prof shared about one of his pet topics, BioBusiness. Since BioBuniness is so darn big(Accounting for more than 25% of global GDP and 40% of world’s labour force), it is only logical to pay attention to it and the emerging opportunities and technologies.  Prof did a comparison of the market share comparing global, sounth Asia, east Asia and the US. He went to talk about lives in the poorer countries and the types of disease that has been killing them, we learnt the difference between the disease of deprevation and disease of excess and its trends. We also talked the increasing growth in patents for life sciences and why the dilemma of patenting a product. After sharing with us about the healthcare revolution and biomedical science revolution, the speakers for the week came up to talk. The first presentation talked about prostatic made us think of what competition should be like for disabled people, it also tickled our minds by the definition of normal for human beings. The second presentation talked about electronic skin. Though its limitation of having of replace it every 3-4 days, it has much potential because of its nano technology. The theird presentation started with a video of cloning of a mice then went on to talk about education systems and ethics.

The one thing i found most interesting in this lesson is about patents. The laws made both  encouraged and discourage companies in the BioBusiness to come up with new products. The reason for the first notion is that by giving companies a 18-20 year copyright protection, they have a license to charge and suck up as much money from the community for that period of time. The reason why it discourages some companies would be because some companies might not want to come up with tropical drugs. Spending millions of dollars in research will take many years to cover cost. Some within 18 months might not be able to do so. Helping the poor who cannot afford the drugs might have to be done by governments and charities.  What prof said about sharing a patent technology to other companies at a profit will be beneficial to the world.

Quick takeaways from the lesson:
-BioBusiness is a huge industry.
-BioBusiness Companies can generate huge revenues way surpassing fortune 500 companies.
-Unfortunately, there is a huge disparity in the business, the rich earns too much, the poor like farmers earn peanuts.
-The dealing with disease of excess in the future, the world will have to think about that.
-Prostatic limbs discussion taught me to have make sure clear distinction for rules to eliminate ambiguity.
-Electronic skins a cool technology, seeing the fruits of nano technology.
-Spending more money in education does not necessarily equate to more ethical students.
-Microsoft technology for the future might just come sooner that we think especially with all the infrastructure in place.

What I hope to see being discuss in the future. I actually will like to go one more step into the future eto see the world with Africa being the dominant player in the world’s economy, after eliminating disease of depravation. What will the rapid growth in technology lead to?

I will rate this class a 7.5/10. It opened my mind to the world of BioBusiness and its progress..