Week 6

This lesson talks about the biobusiness revolution. BioBusiness is a commercial activity based on an understand of the sciences and life science processes. There are several different areas of opportunities in BioBusiness such as Biomedical, Agri-veterinary and environmental. Contrary to what I used to believe as a highly specialised field, it actually encompasses a large variety of industries.

BioBusiness constitutes a large proportion of the world's economic activity - 25% of the global GDP. It is interesting to note that it also constitutes 40% of the labour force. In other words, many biobusinesses are still very inefficient and low on the value chain. This is due to the high amount of people still engaging in low wage subsistence farming in developing country. Another interesting issue is that although the US is the most advanced country today, its citizens face a healthcare problem. Although US spending on healthcare is an astounding 52% of global expenditure on healthcare, it is being treated commercialised product in order to maximise profit. As a result, many Amercians do not have ready access to health facilities. To make matters worse, 1/3 of the American adults are obese which directly and indirectly cause amount of people with diseases to be higher.

An issue brought up which is also mentioned in reading 1, is the shift from disease management to wellness management. Disease management is the process of stabilize and even improve the condition of someone already who has a disease. Wellness management is the prevention of diseases. In other words, for the healthy to stay healthy, emphasizing health promotion and quality of life.


It is ironic that while people are getting increasingly educated and affluent, the ability to have better healthcare facilities and the knowledge to stay healthy increases but reality is that health is deteoriating.(as in the case of americans)

My key takeaway for this lesson is realising how vast the biobusiness industry is and how the advancement in biotechnology enables the the medical field and even field of sustainable energy source to be stretched further.

A controversial issue that was discussed is the process of cloning. Definitely ethical dilemmas will arise but I feel there would be a future in this technology. As Prof Shahi pertinently brought up the comparison of IVF. 30 years ago churches heavily opposed IVF as it represents a notion of playing god. However, if the human mind has evolved to a point where such medical technology has been created to practically benefit mankind, I see no reason why such processes are to be denied. Of course, proper measures and policies have to be in place to manage the possible repercussions from prcocesses such as cloning.

Personal rating for this lesson would be 8/10. I prefer the pace of the lesson when there is only one main topic to focus on.

-Zhishu of G22