Sequencing and Pharma

I almost went into the pharmaceutical industry. It was the hot thing when I was in high school, and the promise of finding new medicines every few years and helping people while making money was very attractive. Then I went to school, worked in labs/major pharma companies, and delved more into what was under the hood and discovered that it was more like playing roulette than chess. The name of the game was lets try just about everything, and hope that one hits. One billion dollars in investment money, countless potential candidates, maybe one that gets through. That was it in a nutshell. And for all of the guys that put up the money hoping to strike it rich, you had no idea what kind of return on investment you were going to get. If you were lucky, boom Amgen, if not, you got a drug that is applicable to maybe 100,000 people in the world...not all of whom have money and insurance to pay you back.

Fast forward a bit, and now the human genome has been entirely sequenced, and the cost of sequencing has gone down from millions to 10-20k. Not something the average Joe can afford, but more palatable for investors and research firms. Because of this the new fad is personalized medicine, and finding drugs and cures through sequencing. How do you do it you say?

Here's an example. Joe has cancer. He goes to his doctor and they sequence his DNA - once for normal tissue, and once for cancer tissue (FYI double the cost at least). Lab tech crunches the data and finds where the mutations are, and more techs come and discuss which ones may be affecting which pathways to cause the cancer. Drugs are then developed to suppress said genes, and the cancer is controlled. This is very ideal and many things can affect this though. #1 cancer constantly mutates/evolves, so once you control it, it may just mutate and render your old drugs useless. Then you get into the cycle of just testing/drug making/mutating. Sounds expensive.

What scientists are doing now is trying to some data mining. Basically sequence everything - every patient with every type of cancer with every type of background to be ready for whatever comes up. Huge gaps right now though are testing (doh!), and the fact that they really have no idea if the cancer will mutate in predictable ways depending on what drug you use to fight it.

All in all, nice concept - we will have to see how it shakes out, but seems too ideal and expensive (aka not practical). It is though one of the best options for fighting cancer

The future of TV

It's amazing to think how lucrative the TV business is. Stations stay online by charging massive fees for ads...I mean massive. To think that they can pay actors millions or whatever and still make a profit is pretty crazy to think about. Not to mention they have to pay overhead, and for all of the executives....I wonder what kind of profit margins they do pull in per show.

Anyways times are changing, and everyone wants to have the next big idea for TV. Apple has Apple TV, Google has one, the Wii and PS3 and XBox can interact with Netflix, and Hulu makes so many shows available online. Cable companies are now beginning to sweat if they are going to be able to pay themselves in 20 years or not, and when rich white men see people intruding on their wealth they get angry. The reason that they are sweating is that while people start to watch TV in a different way, people aren't seeing the ads as much. I don't think cable companies care as much about the monthly subscription as much as they care about if the ad companies will continue to pay such high fees to keep them running. In addition, the DVR makes it so that you can just skip right over commercials...I bet the companies paying all that money for them don't appreciate that too much. And yet ironically I bet their families love skipping over them. Funny to think about.

I think in the next decade we will begin to see new business models from cable companies, and new attitudes from consumers. Because if everyone goes to the internet to get shows, no one feeds the networks, and if no one feeds the networks, who's gonna make the shows? Are we just going to have low budget crappy TV? That would suck...there needs to be some sort of equilibrium that everyone will have to settle on. Fees may rise which may suck for consumers, and bonuses and salaries might not be as high for actors and executives, which will suck for them. Or they might just charge more for ads, which will suck for the companies, which will force them to re-think if they want to run ads, and how they can better target audiences.

On the technology side though I'm not quite sure what will happen. Google bet big with Google TV, and it might not pay off...I mean I don't see the huge benefit in buying and using Google TV. When I was home in Cali, my dad has a laptop with an HDMI out. We just plugged that into the TV and boom, hulu, korean dramas and whatever else you want were on the TV right then and there. No compatibility issues, no subtitle issues, no file type issues because it was a straight up computer. Hulu blocks Google TV, so that's auto trash for me and probably millions of other potential customers.

What would be nice I think is if they just put the android OS on TVs so that when I watch football games my fantasy points would auto accumulate on the TV so I can cheer along more. I'm sure there are lot of other little apps that you can write that I would like, but here's the thing: if you take up room on my TV that is unnecessary I will cut you. Seriously, I already paid way too much for my 46", if you try and jip me with ads or other crap like that you will be trashed so fast you won't have time to make a fraction of a cent from Google AdSense.

Finally 3D TVs....really...really?? Who wants to wear lame glasses to watch TV, and when you take them off the picture looks like crap because it is trying to get the imaging correct. When you can project 3D that will be interesting. Will you be able to control the depth? How strong will the light be? Will it be blinding if I sit too close? What will I see if I go in between the TV and the end of the projected image? Lot of questions and probably no answers yet.

For now though I'm happy with my TV experience. I wish I had FIOS, but settle for Comcast for now.