Pros & Cons - Biotechnology - Socio-economic factors

Christopher Reeves, a spinal cord research advocate died on October 10, 2004. He was also known as "Superman", for his role in the movie of same name. Superman, if he existed in real world, would be an ultimate marvel of Biotechnology!

Reeves work, in lobbying for stem cell research is a well publicized fact. It brings us to an interesting addition of politics to socio-economics. It wouldn't be inappropriate to use "socio-political-economic factors affecting Biotechnology" as our title for today's discussion.

Maintaining balance in these three factors can be quite a task! Privacy issues related with RFID are child's play when compared to social, economic and political factors associated with Biotech.

Consider one case of biotech company working on Cancer cure, announces some success in curing cancer in rats. What is the impact? Stock rises astronomically in matter of hours and drops to ground on same day! Millions of dollars are gained and lost. Hopes are raised for millions of cancer patients, only to be dashed to ground, as it yet to be tested on humans.

Now consider another case, where a biotech company applies the research it has successfully done, in generating superior variety of crop which solves food crisis in heavily populated third world countries! In this case, social factors are favorable and so are economic factors, but political factors may not be favorable.

If we decide to start a biotech company, where do these three factors leave us? It may seem to few of you, that I am painting a pessimistic picture about biotech. I would love to hear your comments on this topic.

Tomorrow, I will summarize, biotech pros and cons and move on to our next topic: Nanotechnology pros and cons.

Comments

Anonymous said…
[...]Antibacterial and antimicrobial biotechnology information, personal response system research[...] 

Posted by John Malish
October 30, 2006 9:34 AM
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