The terms I hand waived defined can be made much more precise, but to do so looses popular comprehension. Notice I didn't use T-cell. I did, but I eliminated it. Surprisingly these two concepts need to be clarified and used by the analysts more than they do because there is a growing rift between these two camps. I believe the first phase of biotechnology is coming to a close and the second phase, tops down, will come to flower. I also believe IMNR will lead the parade. It's only my guess.
We live in a authority driven society. Authority undermines democracy because it makes individuals too dependent on the presumed skills of others. The more complex society becomes, the greater is the necessary reliance on expertise, but that isn't the same as being relieved of the personal duty to become informed on every aspect of society that impinges your life. When people are well-informed, they make better decisions and they make democracy work more efficiently.
The tendency to extoll the virtues of authority through expertise is seen when you graduate from Podunk School of Medicine and try to get a job. You didn't come from the big schools so you end up with less compensation regardless of your skill. Your skill would become apparent and you'd get appropriate compensation if we had a free market in medicine, We don't. We have some totalitarian managed health care system predicated on the public demand to be protected by government from profiteering evil doctors. Like telecommunications, utilities, transportation, oil, most of our society is anti free market. Without free market forces at work the skilled doctors are ignored and eventually loose their skill because they see what a sham the whole operation is. Unless you have been properly designated by the properly designated university, you eat dog food. That is somewhat how the scientists at IMNR are considered. They aren't from the big name schools or if they are, they joined up with a company that is considered "low tech" by the cognoscenti because they don't do the right science, bottoms up.
The powers that be, the pharmas, are making fortunes off the the bottoms up hegemony. They certainly don't want a big movement into another approach unless they are strategically positioned to benefit. Now some of the biggies are getting interested in IMNR's approach, so you won't be hearing much sneering at IMNR's presumed inferior science now and you won't hear the belittling jokes in the corridor at health conferences aimed towards her scientists. |
