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Health is not Human Services

This pandemic will cost more than $16 trillion. If we could avoid the next one, it would be worth spending more than triple what we do now. So we should spend the money, just not through HHS.

Policy

CDC should stop talking directly to citizens

The case for caring less about the public’s understanding of policy

MediCorps

Fighting pandemics requires a different kind of medical training.

Vaccines are the new biohacking

As in, "I'm getting a bio-upgrade today." Today, it's a better immune system. Tomorrow, who knows?

Permissionless biohacking

We’re gaining the power to design our babies and eventually create superpeople. Our society and public institutions aren’t ready. So how do you think about an industry that’s going to be super important, but doesn’t exist yet? You can think like an investor.

Business

Why there will never* be an Apple of the life sciences

In the last century, humanity mastered computation and data storage. In this century, humanity will master biology. Does that mean life science companies will start looking more like computer companies?

Defense

Bionationalism

Biotech is a security issue, even if we don’t want it to be

Policy

How to waste a billion dollars on biotech

The public sees defense contractors as their biggest parasite. Let’s not let biotech go there.

Policy

Let’s track COVID variants—and everything else, too

COVID variant tracking is having its moment. The only way to understand the long-term risks of COVID is to track the disease’s genome around the world and over time. The bigger question is what else we should be sequencing.

Policy

NIAID Rising

If sequencing is a house that cancer genotyping built, COVID variant tracking is about to buy up all the lots in the neighborhood and build a hi-rise. If cell therapy was a starving artist bankrolled by its rich uncle Oncology, it’s about to get an antiviral record deal.

Policy

Biopower Projection

Biotechnology is a reserve of soft power. It can be used to deliver humanitarian aid, secure commerce, and build global incentives favorable to US hegemony.

Policy

Dawn of the bio-industrial complex

BARDA’s Industry Day used to fit in a small hotel ballroom. By 2019 it was spread over two hotels and overrun with industry. Soon they'll be in a convention hall. Industry is showing up because BARDA has the budget and the focus to pick winners and make fortunes.

Business

Between a rock and a sheer drop

The benefit of nanopore sequencing is in size, weight, and power: it enables sequencing in the field. Oxford Nanopore is literally driving on roads where Illumina can’t go.

Policy

The next war

We accept without question that it’s better to fight a threat “over there” than “over here.” Our military is designed to project American influence into the furthest corners of the world. We could take the same approach to fighting infectious disease.

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