Post 10: And … who pays for science 😶

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Doing science costs millions of dollars, with returns often seen over decades or even longer. On the other hand, science creates markets that eventually drive macroeconomic aspects of countries, as seen with chips for Taiwan or AI for the U.S./China today. So yes, it is important to fund science, even though it’s very expensive.

To illustrate this, we can look at George Church’s lab at Harvard. This lab produces innovative biotechnology to the point that 16 small companies have spun out from it in just one year. This is a photo of George and several of his colleagues surrounding him.

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In comparison, the Institute of Biotechnology at UNAM has taken 12 years to create the company that commercializes FungiFree, a bio-fungicide that is often seen as a source of pride for the institute; additionally, in 10 years, this institute has made about 11 technology transfers. In fact, even Harvard’s economy is larger than that of many countries.

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A considerable part of Harvard’s economy comes from the “philanthropy” of several billionaires, and while that sounds very “nice,” it can actually be quite grotesque. For example, Jeffrey Epstein was a well-known pedophile and corrupt billionaire who used to engage in “philanthropic” actions to clean up his image, including donating millions of dollars to Harvard; and several of those millions went to George Church’s lab, who eventually publicly apologized for his lack of knowledge and judgment regarding the sources of his funding.

So, in the world of money, things are really complicated, and grotesque situations like this one are present. It’s not just in science but behind every human activity, unfortunately. The war with Spotify, blood in avocado production, child slavery with Nestlé products …

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