Not until I attended this session did I realize such an interesting fact that Bio-business is currently a money-printing industry, whose profit surprisingly makes up a quarter of GLOBAL GDP!!! Since there are quite a few sub-industries in Bio-business, such biomedical, environmental industries and so on, this session only covered the most influential one, namely biomedical. Biomedical, which constitutes most of the profit of the entire Bio-business industry, in turn has some sub-industries including healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, the latter of which reminds me some scandals in which some pharmaceutical companies either produced fake medicines and transferred them to third-world countries or launching delusional campaign promoting their products.
Some graphs and tables were shown during the session and in one of them I found that the US alone in 2001 witnessed more than one-third of its GDP constituted by BIobusiness, which is around $3500. That gigantic amount is nearly 1.5 times larger than the entire GDP of Russia in 2010($2230 billion, CIA factbook). A half of that amount that (roughly $1500) came from the healthcare sector so it is quite clear now why the American are so healthy and “bulky”. But life is not a bed of roses. Prof said that most of the $1500 is profit gained from lifespan-extension treatment on the elder, who can no longer contribute to the economic development. Obviously, that is somehow a lousy investment, though the elder naturally need to be taken care of and respected for their past contribution to their countries, since they will pass away eventually in a short time, and the benefits gained from their extended years of life isn’t worth that huge amount of money.
There was also a graph showing the percentage of people dying from chronic diseases such as cancer and from communicable diseases such as diarrhoea/cholera or malnutrition worldwide. Only 6% in Europe and Central Asia decease because of the latter while 72% in Africa are killed by such causes. There lies an unspoken and sad fact: inequality among humankind still exists. However, there are still hopes somewhere since Prof also noticed during the session that the healthcare revolution is developing, more effective and cheap medicines and vaccines are being designed and produced.
All of the presentations made by other students during this session were truly amazing. All of the topics raised were very engaging, such as whether people can become immortal or not if their genes to be modified, or the rise of MHealth. The latter is the best so far since it received more than twenty “10”.Standing applause for the presenter of this topic since both his speech and his slideshows were simply awesome. This guy must have spent a lot of time designing his slides as there were quite a few of animations and pictures in these slides. Regarding his content, MHealth nowadays is becoming very pervasive thanks to the rapid development of smartphones. Virtually, only with a smartphone, people now can meet their own favourite doctor anywhere and anytime (if the doctor himself or herself is free of course), which not only helps to save time and money of people but also promotes their privacy.
Key takeaways:
1.Moral hazard: Simply speaking, moral hazard describing the tendency of people to act carelessly when they are not open to or actually themselves not aware of the risks around them. To illustrate, after obtaining a health insurance package, people are inclined to drive or work in a way that not as safe as it is when they are not under any kind of insurance scheme since they think that if anything happens to them, the insurance companies which they have contracted with will take care of them. This is without doubt a very dangerous habit since it could lead to serious injuries or even deaths, and it is very insensible to think that money has more values than one’s health. Hence, it is very necessary for insurees to act normally as if nothing has happened to them.
2.Immortality: Life is precious so everyone all wants to keep it as long as possible. But is it really a good idea to be able to live forever? Some say yes if touching on the surface of the issue since once lifespan of people becomes limitless, everyone will then have more time to try new things or continue enjoying the things that they have already been interested in. Moreover, people will no longer have to bear the pain of losing their relatives or friends and cremation service will meet its end. But when digging deeper into this issue, we may realize that things are more complicated than they seem to be. Why? Here is the answer. (Thanks Aishwaryal Singhal a lot for sharing the link).
Quite true isn’t? Moderation in every aspect of our life is the key opening the door to ultimate happiness.
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
I would rate this session 9/10 because of the awesome presentations of the others. It could have been rated 10/10 if more discussion about the following issues took place:
1. The sustainability of Bio-business, especially the Biomedical industry.
2. Short-term and long-term solutions for eradicating famine, malnutrition and communicable diseases in Africa.
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