Session 6

The Biobusiness Revolution has the potential, for now, will transform our lives and our economies. The “lives” here include our health, food, cloths, and energy source. I have been listening to many news on how Biotechnology or business has been integrated in our society. In my opinion, I always equate biobusiness to biotechnology. However, the truth is Biobusiness has a much wider range than biotechnology. Biobusiness includes food industry, energy source, anything that is got to do with live, and of course, biotechnology. Professor Shahi also mentioned that biobusiness might even include prostitution-.-"

Many people think that Biobusiness might be our best hope for achieving sustainable development. However, I would say that there are 2 answers to this question. On the positive light, biobusiness does benefit the society to a certain extent. Alternative source of energy such as bio fuel are being discovered to reduce the depletion of non-renewable natural resources or using genetic engineering to increase food production to cope with food scarcity are all great discoveries. However, technology is always a double edge sword. No matter how good it may seems, there will always be detrimental effects. The main source of bio fuel are corn, wheat and rice. Why would people turn the world's main food staple into fuel when there are people starving to death? Also, due to the introduction of bio fuels, the price of these main food staple increased drastically. Isn't it imposing a heavier burden on the poor? As for the case of using genetic engineering to increase food production, there is one well-known product, which is the genetically modified Salmon. Scientist has discovered that these sterile Salmon are more attractive to their partners as compared to the normal salmon. This may disrupt the ecosystem if these GM salmons are let into the wild as there will be a great reduction in the number of salmons. Hence, I feel that even though Biobusiness have contributed to the sustainable development, people must be aware of the danger or detrimental effects of it.

Disruptive innovation, is a completely new concept that I came across in this week's article. According to the definition from wikipedia, disruptive innovation is an innovation that disrupts an existing market.The article suggests that the health care industry is actually resistant toward the introducion of disruptive innovation (low cost alternative health equipments which can be used by public). This resistant comes from certain professionals, such as radiologist, insurance company and hospitals, as mentioned in the article. It is understandable that in order to keep their jobs or maximising their profits, these people are not in favour of introducing disruptive innovation, however this resistant actually hinders the development of public care. There is one statement written in the article that have my full support: "[m]anagers and technologies need to focus instead on enabling less expensive professionals to do progressively more sophisticated things is less expensive settings." The direction that the health care researchers are moving towards should no longer be focusing only on developing more advanced technology, but also on creating innovations that enable procedures to be done in less expensive and more convenient settings. Imaging one day if most of the patients that requires hospital stay can receive treatments in the clinic, this will defintely remove the heavy burden of medical fee from the patients family. In regards to the solution of this crisis (resistant), I fully agree with the article that leaders of the industry should take the initiative to remove the barrier that have prevented the introduction of disruptive innovation.

I will rate this session 8/10. This is because I am interested in this topic. I was a biology student in Junior College, hence some of the technical terms mentioned during the presentation was memory refreshing. The presentation that I like most in this session is on the growing of organs. I have heard of it but not in detail. The ethical issues associated with this technology is similar to human cloning. Should man be creating man? Or should it be God's work? I am agreeable to one of the ideas brought up, which is to use this technology only for medical purposes, but not to create a "better man kind". I have actualy came across a forum discussing on the question "should man be mordifying our genetic make-up?" Some people brought out the fact that if people mordify their DNA so that they get the so called "best" genetic make up, won't everyone ended up having the same appearance, behaviour and character? While studying on the topic "evolution", I learn that in order to survive, variation is required. One of the very good example is cheetah. According to the research, cheetahs are 99 per cent genetically identical and a virus could wipe out entire populations. If we human are also 99 per cent genetically identical to each other (all having the "best" DNA), wouldn't we be facing the same problem also?