Think Gene Status Update
No, Think Gene isn’t dead; I have just been busy at work lately, and Josh has been busy at school. As noted, I’m working with Dr. Murphy (Gene Sherpa) to launch a multi-specialty practice in CT. My theory is that most of the paperwork at a medical practice can be handled and automated by a few smart hackers working directly with physicians. How do I like the business of health care? Health administration is a festering sore weeping capital letters.
So, why bother mechanizing people when machines mechanize so much better? The work does suck, but the health care industry is a worthy target for my extended attention if I can substantiate that work with software, and I think of this as an extended penance. At the end, I’ll have created something interesting and good, and then I will be qualified to interact with other interesting and good people, and that’s what motivates me. Thus, I’ll be refocusing Think Gene from general genetic biology science and to the medical application of genetics and technology in health care.
What else…
23andMe: obviously illegal as in “you would never had the institutional and legal preauthorization to do this,” but laws are apparently for poor people. 23andMe believes it’s a Raskolnikov “Great Company” and so justified to build their own institutional chain of trust directly from published scientific research to patient application without bothering to acknowledge any other institution. I have to respect the courage to try that.
I know 23andMe’s game, it’s the “break the mean with variance” game, and it’s the same Silicon Valley game that’s been played by internet media companies for the last decade. How to play: a network of superior talent and funding backs a group of startups that executes something outrageous and otherwise unobtainable by contractual or legal permission (like YouTube, Napster, Google itself… have we forgotten the shear audacity of copying all the information in the world without permission?) Then, that startup pushes to spread that new idea as far into the public as possible before lumbering regulatory agencies and competitors can react. When the opposition (like RIAA, the State of New York, etc) finally mounts a counter attack, it now must compromise between the unsustainable but irretractable audacity of the startup and the previous status quo. The resulting compromise between these two extremes settles far beyond what could have been arranged in advance.
What people do not seem to realize is that technology startup companies are designed to be disposable. So what if any particular startup fails? The founders, engineering experience, and investor relationships are preserved, and now these same people can reconfigure themselves to try again —but now in the industry they themselves had strategically created at the last failed startup. It’s one perpetual “fuck you” to human superstition in pursuit to exploit the laws of nature, and if you have the substance to back your attitude —what a great way to live.
That said, the worst thing that direct to consumer genetic companies can do now is succumb to an actual Raskolnikov breakdown of inaction. History forgives an audacious winner, but everybody —except maybe Jesus— hates a guilty loser. That’s just human nature. I don’t care about any particular company, but a bubble of marketing without substance is too easy to pop with aggressive regulation. A big *pop* will styme dishonest advances as intended, but also real scientific and engineering achievement in medical genetics. So, what are necessary now are regular engineering achievements to substantiate the direct-to-consumer genetics bubble to weather the mounting institutional backlash. But, I think that at least 23andMe’s investors recognize this as the circumstantial evidence of more product and less marketing in their company suggests this. If not, fortunately, the poor economy seems to have made new, bubbly marketing and bizdev ploys infeasible. It may be too late for Navigenics to change. I have no idea about deCODEme.
Think Gene at Technorati
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