Drug Discovery Holds Lesson for FCC on Net Neutrality Regulations
by Mike WendyThe other day it was announced that a well known, mega-company discovered a new way to destroy antibiotic resistant bacteria, such as MRSA. Using nanoparticle technology – which is 50,000 times smaller than a hair’s width – the company’s researchers were able to target an electrical charge on the bacteria’s surface, bursting the membrane open to bring about its demise.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “if successful, [the discovery] would offer a fresh strategy against a worrisome public-health problem of possibly deadly bacteria evolving to become impervious to antibiotics.” Nearly 19,000 people in the U.S. each year die from drug-resistant MRSA. Needless to say, this could be a big breakthrough.
Was it Pfizer, Bayer, Merck / Schering-Plough or one of the other great pharmaceutical companies that made the huge discovery?
No.
It was Big Blue – IBM – one of the world’s largest IT firms.
So what, you might say.
Well, we talk a lot about innovation and discovery like it’s just simple math. And when we see the results, we say, “Oh, yeah, I see. It’s obvious how ‘x’ could be.” Yet, when it gets down to it, a lot of discovery is art, accidental, and non-linear.
IBM makes mainframes, software, and provides IT services to individuals and companies across the globe. Though the company has been working on nanotechnology for years, who could have predicted they’d be combating MRSA? It’s not a drug company. But, today, it looks like it is (or certainly could be).
This non-linear, man-bites-dog discoverer – IBM as pharma company – holds an important lesson for regulators of technology.







Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?