Chinese-American
nanoscience made a Great Leap Forward through the collaborative
effort of the National Center
for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST) in Beijing and Arizona State University’s
Biodesign Institute's Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics: in a
first in vivo murine study, autonomous nanorobots proved to be intelligent
delivery vehicles capable of causing complete cancer regression within a few
days. DNA nanorobots employed
one of the new
drug delivery methods (which have always been a fundamental strength of
nanotechnology) with thrombin-loaded
DNA programmed to respond to a molecular trigger to fold into itself like an origami sheet
and subsequently, like a tiny machine, deploy thrombin at the targeted point. By
injecting tumor-associated blood vessels with thrombin that cut off tumor blood
supply within 24 hours, nanorobots caused tumor cell shrinkage and necrosis. Most
notably, clotting did not occur in healthy tissues other than those programmed
for targeting. Significantly, in a
control study of side effects in porcines, healthy tissues also remained
unaffected. Once fully tested and developed for human use, the technology will
obviate the need for most chemotherapy models as well as use of targeted drugs,
because elimination of blood supply limited to tumor cells yields far more
precise results.
Now
for the real hurdle: overcoming opposition to approval for human use by vested
interests in the multi-billion chemotherapy and radiation therapy industry.
Luckily, and quite significantly, this technology did not originate in Lobbyland,
and following very recent reforms of the Chinese drug
and device approval process, chances are that Chinese approvals of
nanorobot therapy will be way faster, securing East Asia’s foothold in the
future of cancer therapy. That would, of course, happen not a moment too soon,
given the explosion
of cancer rates in China, largely
due to severe carcinogenic
environmental pollution in heavily industrialized parts of the country that
already experiences a wide array of consequences of limited effectiveness
of environmental regulation, held back in favor of rapid and profitable
industrialization. But the interesting observation is that forum shopping to
defeat inefficient bureaucracies is gaining ground in science and technology
and with startup environments, just as it did in litigation, taxation, treaty
shopping and multiple other areas: market players vote with their feet on the
quality, efficiency and stimulation effects of regulation, and pass value
judgment on its overall utility.
Philippe Legrain is one of the
most attractive independent thinkers at
LSE – one might label him a contrarian with at
least some good cause – in the populist universe that gave us
Brexit. What I find most amusing is that his almost trivial economics lends
to leave opponents with next to no plausible logic to contradict him. His
recent scholarship precipitated richly on the obvious: why immigration
boosts the GDP. It is only in an era of mass stultification through grotesquely
emotionalized nationalist arguments pitching to a base blissfully unaware of
the lessons of history and without comprehensible basis in economic fact, that
this would support a “controversial”
intellectual agenda over the years
as it has in Legrain’s case while he argued for a “European
Spring.”
Now, it is hardly a
revolutionary idea that doing the right thing from a humanitarian perspective
turns out yielding dividends and is actually
good business. What is a welcome change, however, is to voice such substantiated
Merkelism at a time of Realpolitik when the pendulum of irrational fears
and anger swings in the opposite direction in so many places.
In Refugees
Work: A Humanitarian Investment That Yields Economic Dividends, a paper that appears to be the first comprehensive
international study of its kind, Legrain shows how refugees contribute to
advanced economies, and found that they double the host society’s investment in
them over a period of just five years. Would that the same could be said about
each dollar invested in aging natives. Refugees contribute economically as workers
of all skill levels, entrepreneurs, innovators, taxpayers, consumers and
investors. The “diversity
dividend” is, in fact, remarkable:
more than three in four patents filed in 2011 at the top-ten patent-generating
U.S. universities were attributed to at least one foreign-born inventor, while
in Britain, migrants were found to be almost twice as likely to start a
business as are locals. The most entrepreneurial migrants in Australia are
refugees. One-third of recent refugees in Sweden are college graduates while
two-thirds of those have skills that match current graduate job vacancies.
While it would certainly
appear that Legrain falls victim to his own propaganda and pitches his findings
as actual solutions, without applying the same strict scrutiny to the cost side
of his cost-benefit analysis, there is no question that many if not all of the
most successful synthetic societies in modern history leveraged economic
contributions made by refugees: the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada,
Israel, but also Germany and several South American nations come to mind. In
turn, refusal to quickly integrate and invest in refugees has proved disastrous
in the case of Arab Nations with regard to Palestinians, and across Africa with
its numerous displacements in the wake of seismic political shifts. Although
even prolific generators of refugees can end up beneficiaries: remittances from
abroad to Liberia,
for example, amount to 18.5% of its GDP. Some of Legrain’s findings are
fallacious on their face, or, rather, reflect trivialities:
so, for example, the “discovery” that recognition of foreign qualifications
ought to be streamlined, since it costs only £25,000 to train a refugee doctor to practice in the U.K., while it
costs over £250,000 to “mint” a new British physician. If only social
engineering were that simple, and could afford to ignore blowback from
professions and market segments facing competition from immigrants. Refugees
are not, and cannot be, the sole priority and consideration in balancing social
interests.
Among the interesting findings
of Legrain’s study is that the U.S. is more successful than the EU at getting
refugees to work: their greater initial investment results in a higher rate of
employment than for people born in the U.S., with earnings rising sharply over time
while reliance on social assistance declines rapidly. If, as is plausible, the
first priority should be to get refugees to work early, then granting asylum
seekers right to work while their claims are being reviewed, as is done in
Canada or Sweden, but not in the U.S., is an act of simple pragmatism, not of
principle. Legraine is right that policy ought to combine the active assistance
of the Swedish model with the job and entrepreneurial opportunities in U.S.
practice. Refugees ought to be resettled where there are jobs, not in areas
where cheap housing is available but jobs aren’t, and the same is true of rigid
labor markets privileging insiders at the expense of outsiders, not to mention
stifling entrepreneurship. While government assistance for refugees ought to be
generous, prompt and wide-ranging initially, open-ended welfare provisions not
only create a moral hazard but also have, on balance, a negative impact. Serious analytic examination of economic benefits of
diversity, initiated inter alia
by Legrain, has far from ended and has barely begun to demonstrate its
predictable wealth of results.
