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bfitdoon · 4 years ago

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How to Get Admission to B Pharma Course

Why B Pharma

B Pharma, short for Bachelor of Pharmacy is a comprehensive undergraduate course in the widely-acclaimed field of pharmacy. The duration of a B Pharma course is usually four years, and it is one of the primary requirements if an individual wishes to be a pharmacist or pursue a career in the pharmaceutical industry. It is a course that makes pharmaceutical enthusiasts qualified to open their pharmacy stores or be a part of the industry for research purposes. The top B Pharma college in India, such as BFIT Doon, equips young individuals to pursue a successful career in pharmaceutical sciences through this career-oriented course that equips them with the basic skills and knowledge on medicines. The key subjects covered in a B Pharma course provided by the top B Pharma college in India include knowledge on medicines, drugs, the chemical structure of medicines and drugs, and their formulation.

B Pharma is a detailed, meticulous course that has a rigorous course structure and requires students to undergo a mandatory practical training of 150 hours during the study after the completion of the first 4 semesters, in either pharmaceutical and allied studies or pharmacy practice. After the completion of the course, the qualified students are placed in various national and international medical and drug research companies in India and across the globe to apply their skills and knowledge. Students interested in entrepreneurship can also get a license from the State Pharmacy Council and open their chemist shops and medical stores.

Job Prospects After B Pharma

B Pharma is a popular course choice among science students who wish to pursue a successful career in the pharmaceutical industry. These pharmacy graduates can easily acquire jobs in government sectors such as Pharmacies, Health Centers, Medical Dispensing stores, and Food and Drug Administration. The following are the job prospects after completing the course from a top B Pharma college in India, such as BFIT Doon:

Drug Inspector

A drug inspector is primarily responsible for inspecting different establishments where medicines, foods, and similar consumer items are manufactured, stored, handled, and sold to enforce necessary and pre-set legal standards about sanitization, grading, and purity.

Medical Writer

A medical writer is a professional who works with doctors, scientists, and other field experts to effectively document and report the research results, product usage instructions, and other related medical information.

Pharmacy Businessman

The main job role of a pharmacy businessman is to aid the distribution and dispensation of medication in wholesale or retail markets regionally or all across all India after going through a comprehensive process. This includes going through all legal and ethical guidelines by major regulatory bodies in the country and ensuring that safe and appropriate medicines are distributed to the public.

Formulation Development Associate

A formulation development associate is responsible for the formulation and development of new drugs and process systems. They can execute the various stages and aspects of formulation within the given deadlines and provide extra technical support.

Pharmaceutical Scientist

A pharmaceutical scientist is a well-trained expert who is mainly responsible for discovering, developing, testing, and manufacturing new medicines and drugs.

Drug Safety Associate

A drug safety associate is in charge of monitoring the overall safety of medicines and evaluating and preventing adverse effects and reactions in patients. The job role of a DS associate is to effectively distinguish and analyze the ratio of risks along with the benefits of a drug that is marketed in the sector.

Clinical Research Associate

A clinical research associate collects and compiles all the data and findings obtained during studies and field trials and documents the same to effectively and clearly describe the results of product use and additional information.

Procedure to pursue B Pharma

To get admission to a top B Pharma college in India, you need to pass your 10+2 examinations with English, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology/Maths. The admission is based primarily on the results of entrance based exams that are conducted by various universities.

Procedure for Merit-based admission in B Pharma

For merit-based admissions, students need to get a good percentage in Class 12. In due course of time, the colleges of your choice who use this method will release merit lists and it is important to check if you are eligible for your B Pharma course. Finally, if you are eligible, you need to visit the college and submit all the required documents. Alternatively, several institutions also offer online submission of documents to suit the convenience of students who do not reside in the same city or state.

Procedure for Entrance-based admission in B Pharma course

If you’re opting for entrance-based admission for B Pharma, you have to follow these steps:

- Register yourself online by visiting the official website of the institute or the conducting body

- Fill up the application form with the utmost precision and accuracy

- Scan and upload all the required documents in a clear and legible format to the online portal and in formats approved by the conducting body’s portal

- Pay the application fee online, download your admit card, and prepare for the exam well

If you make it to the list when results are announced, the next step is to go for counseling and final admission.

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ashokainstitute-blog · 6 years ago

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College in Varanasi Engineering College in Varanasi List of College in Varanasi Management College in Varanasi MBA College in Varanasi Pharma College in Varanasi B.tech College in Varanasi

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axiscollege-edu · 2 years ago

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Student choice Best B.pharma College in UP – Axiscolleges.org

Are you Searching for which college has best placement in B Pharma collages in Uttar Pradesh? Axis Colleges is one of the best collage Kanpur in India. Axis Colleges focus on bringing industry-standard tools and technologies to equip our students with a skill set relevant to the real world. We seek excellence in all that we do. We are accepting of new ideas. We create and innovate without fear” For more - https://axiscolleges.org/b_pharma/

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sushilsharma · 2 years ago

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B Pharma kya hai, Full form and full details

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sheatcollege-blog · 6 years ago

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Best Collages all over Uttar Pradesh, Our Moto is Learn Today, Lead Tomorrow!!! #admission2019-20 #UGCApproved #aicteapproved, #Btech #bba #mba #pharma #polytechnic #100%Scholorship to SC/ST and EWS Students!!! http://bit.ly/2uYhkeJ

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ecocore · 7 years ago

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Open Source Gendercodes

Ryan Hammond is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose current work, “Open Source Gendercodes,” focuses on the interplay between gender variation and technoscience. By developing novel sex hormone production technologies, OSG attempts to queer current regimes of ownership and biopower.

Ryan and Lee Pivnik discussed OSG, and where the work is at currently for ECOCORE - The Queer Issue.

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LP: I think it’s important to start with some detailed explanations. I don’t think I’m alone in regrettably feeling ignorant towards the histories of production for most products I consume, and when it comes to hormone production, I never even considered how something like Estrogen makes it from the lab to the individual. Could you explain how hormones are currently being produced, and how your project works to disrupt and democratize that?

RH: In human bodies, all steroid hormones including estrogens (estradiol, estrone, etc.) and androgens (testosterone, dihydrotestosterone, etc.) are produced from cholesterol. Cholesterol is the “substrate” that’s transformed through a series of enzymatically catalyzed chemical reactions to make pregnenolone > progesterone > androstenedione > testosterone > estrone > estradiol. Pharmaceutical steroid hormones are currently produced through multistage fermentation processes, sometimes combined with chemical synthesis steps. Often animal fats, or soybean oil and other plant oils containing phytosterols are used as substrates for microbes that enzymatically transform them. The development of these production technologies from the late 1800’s up to the present is entangled with power structures and ideological frameworks that co-create bodies, subjectivities, and genders. Efforts to eliminate queer, gender non-conforming, non-reproductive behaviors - as well as increase heterosexual prowess and enable lifelong performance of sanctioned masculinities and femininities drove the development of these technologies. Geopolitical forces, state enforced frameworks for the ownership of organisms and biomolecules, colonially imposed and medically enforced binary frameworks of sex and gender, population control and reproductive regimes have sculpted and co-created what we commonly refer to as “male and female sex hormones.” This is what’s most interesting to me, to collage and patch together an image of molecular technologies of gender as hyperobjects that I’m inescapably tangled in, and then involving myself in the parts that are least visible or accessible to me.

Initially I had hoped to help create a way for people to cheaply produce their own sex hormones and form coops for distributed control and production of drugs. While this is technically feasible with current production technologies and emerging Synthetic Biology techniques (the US military is currently funding several initiatives to produce on demand pharmaceuticals in combat zones in briefcase-refrigerator sized bioproduction units) -- the prospect of an affordable device that could produce hormones in transgenic yeast or plants, and additionally perform extraction, purification, and dosage in a safe way is far in the future.

Using SynBio to develop technologies for, cheap, democratized bioproduction is not an interesting research pathway to pharmaceutical companies because this does not grow profits and consolidate power. If we are going to imagine the “radical potential” of these types of technologies to create alternative futures, we have to find alternative ways to drive research in those directions. This is a special time for synthetic biology as it emerges: regulatory frameworks in the U.S. have yet to constrain the use of gene editing technologies, and the tools of the trade are becoming more accessible and affordable. In the popular imaginings that headline the pop discourse of these technologies, they have the capability to create utopian societies of ecologically synchronous abundance and guilt free consumption, or produce apocalyptic deserts at the whims of basement bioterrorists or unwitting experimenters. Most realistically, these technologies have great potential to calcify and reinforce the current imbalances of power and privilege.

Thinking on a smaller scale, outside of this utopian ideal of democratized bioproduction technologies: development of new, cheaper production methods - and their dedication to the public domain, could enable smaller generics companies to enter the market, drive down prices, and increase availability. This is the logic of the team working on the Open Source Insulin project at Counter Culture Labs as well. Creating “open source” drug production protocols is an act of biotechnical disobedience aimed at interrupting the cycle of patenting and legal monopolies that enable price jacking and profiteering in the health industry.

Additionally, could you briefly explain why tobacco plants work best for this?

I’m not necessarily interested in the tobacco plant itself, but in plants in general. It’s been shown that plant based bioproduction systems have several attractive advantages over yeast, bacterial, or mammalian systems. Namely that they’re less susceptible to contamination, and can dramatically lower the cost of production. This also, in my mind, makes something like an algal bio production system an ideal starting point for small scale, “democratized” bioproduction technologies. I focused on the tobacco plant early on in the project because it is a “model” organism, meaning there is already a large body of research on the plant, it’s genetics, metabolic pathways, etc. It has been metabolically engineered to produce human collagen as well as several vaccines. It also has an unusually high level of cholesterol compared to other plants, and has been previously successfully modified to accumulate cholesterol, and to express the first gene in the human steroid hormone metabolic pathway which effectively increased production of pregnenolone and progesterone.

[IMAGE CREDIT Ma, Julian K-C., Pascal M. W. Drake, and Paul Christou. "Genetic Modification: The Production of Recombinant Pharmaceutical Proteins in Plants." Nat Rev Genet Nature Reviews Genetics 4.10 (2003): 794-805. Web.]

The other reason I’m focusing on a plant system is because a French pharma company has already successfully engineered yeast to produce human steroid hormones (their published research deals with hydrocortisone specifically) and subsequently filed for patent. As far as published research goes - higher plants and algal hosts are uncharted territory for estrogen and androgen production, and aren’t currently subject to ownership claims.

I understand that you’re in a trial stage currently, and you are working on “synthesizing necessary genes and producing transformation plasmids that will be shared with collaborators.” Can you explain this process as well?

Yes - basically, there are established methods for “designing” genes - creating sequences of nucleotides that are optimized to do what you want them to do in an organism. There is a lot that is not understood still, and a lot of unpredictability -- but there are ways to designate expression levels of genes, ensure proper folding of proteins, signal transport to specific areas within the cell, and support interaction with other molecules through the design of the gene sequences. It’s a lot of reading papers, seeing what worked for other people, messing with sequences of nucleotides, and the eventually sending off your designed sequence to a company that does gene synthesis. Once the gene is synthesized and mailed to you, it can be ligated (covalently bonded onto other DNA fragments with an enzyme called ligase) into a plasmid -- which is just a circular segment of DNA that can be easily transformed into microbes for expression and replication. With the assistance of a plant pathogen called agrobacterium - the synthesized genes can be inserted into plants. In the wild, agrobacterium genetically modify plants - inserting genes that encode production of auxins (plant hormones that induce tumor growth) and other genes that cause the plant to produce nutrients for the bacteria to feed off of. The tumors are called, “crown galls,” once I learned what they look like, I started to notice them everywhere.

You’re taking new precautions during this stage of the project to protect the work from being co-opted and monetized. What led you to this development, and how are you ensuring that you keep the project open to collaboration but guarded from the same companies and corporations that create this accessibility issue in the first place?

There is a trend in the “open source science,” biohacking, and diybio community to open research and dedicate scientific tools to the public domain or “commons” by publishing (after which it is considered “prior art” rendering it unpatentable and open to reuse or modification by anyone). The problem with this is that small modifications can still be patented. For example, let's say that publicly funded research shows that a newly discovered plant contains a potent cancer-therapeutic, which the researchers successfully produced in a bioreactor with transgenic yeast. A pharmaceutical company could then tweak the system outlined in that study to make production more efficient -- then patent the organism or process as an invention and monopolize the market. And this in fact is what happens all the time - research is funded by public tax dollars, and then snatched up by a private company that claims exclusive rights to something which stands on the shoulders of an entire community outside the patent holder.

I also had some discussions with activists and organizers in Baltimore’s queer and trans community and the one message I was hearing from everyone was, “are you really doing enough to protect the work from being co-opted and monetized?” That really resonated with me, so after that I started to work harder to educate myself and search for some way to create this “openness” that is necessary for collaborative science (especially something as complex as metabolic engineering), while still protecting the work from being scooped up and patented by some “business-minded” person.

So with all that in mind I’m working on a web platform to enable secure communication between contractually bound collaborators, as well as to provide a public facing component. Last fall I connected with a biotech lawyer who offered to do some pro-bono work for the project and create a terms of service document for the website which stipulates that if a person uses information or plasmid DNA provided through the website, they must agree to contribute their results and data back to the community under the same terms

After you produce the work that can be shared with collaborators, where can you see this project going? Do you have a desired outcome? --I’m sure outcome is the wrong word, but I’m interested in knowing what effects this research could have.

I am not trained as a scientist -- I am really pushing my mind to do this work because I love the idea and I want to see if flourish. I enjoy the challenge, and the process has been very transformative for me. Scientific research takes a long time, and is inherently uncertain -- especially when dealing with the complexity of biological systems. I’ve had to learn to be open to that uncertainty and to the possibility of finding answers that are not necessarily leading in the direction I started with.

Did you imagine there would be such an overwhelming response to this project when you began it?

I really didn’t -- and I think overwhelming is such a good way to put it. It was actually so beautiful after running the crowdfunder, to hear from many other people who had thought about pursuing the same research and wanted to see it progress. There were also many valid critiques of what the project could become that I had to spend a lot of time with before I felt comfortable proceeding.

Have you found many others working between these communities? Any other exciting people or projects you’d like to highlight?

I’m very excited to see the Open Source Insulin project progress.

There is a group called Gynepunk out of Spain that I think is doing very interesting work on creating DIY/DIWO tools and methods for gynecology.

I’m also a big fan of Paloma Lopez and Leslie Garcia’s work. They have started the Interspecifics Collective in Mexico City, and work on creating open source tools to explore interspecies communication and aesthetics -- generating sound compositions from the movement and electromagnetic activities of microbes and plants as they are affected by human touch and other interactions.

There is also a person named Mary Maggic who is doing what she calls “River Gynecology” by adapting protocols for detecting estrogenic and endocrine disrupting chemicals in waterways with transgenic yeast to a DIY/DIWO context.

I also think that “biohacking” is such a buzz topic right now because it seems very edgy and punk, but there’s a lot of really exciting work happening within the “open source science” movement that isn’t highlighted because it’s not as slick and high-tech heavy as other things. Mboa Nkoudou is doing really interesting work -- expanding on Shiv Visvanathan’s concept of, “Cognitive Justice” to contextualize the open source movement or the “maker movement” to the global south. I met Mboa at the Global Open Science Hardware Conference, where he facilitated discussions on the ways “Open Source” and “Maker Culture” participate in neo-colonialism, and how to change the culture of these communities in the west so that we’re not contributing to neo-colonial efforts intentionally or ignorantly.

Max Liboiron who runs a feminist marine science lab in Canada called Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR) is also doing really great work to have critical discussions about equity in the Open Source Science Hardware community.

I was reading about a previous project you did in 2014 titled In Between Utopia and Dystopia, which involved collaborating with a group of high schoolers to speculate how emerging fields in science and tech may shape the future. I’ve been reading José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia, The Then and There of Queer Futurity, which challenges us to consider a Queer Utopia.

In his introduction, Muñoz states “Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.” and argues that a queer utopia is necessary to envision as it provides a roadmap towards a better future and an escape from a present where a shortsighted queer politics edges towards assimilation.

Because of your project’s intrinsic futurity and your practice’s history with speculative design, I wanted to know if you’ve considered a Queer Utopia - or would like to, if only for a moment.

[SPECULATIVE PRODUCT DESIGNS BY Se’daysia Cooper-Lee, Nhiaya Williams, Tayler Corporal, Reona Macklin, Dominique Stepney ]

Yes definitely, this work actually grew out of a speculative fiction practice where I was thinking a lot about what utopic technologies might look like to me. That period of time when I was facilitating speculative fiction workshops was the same time period when I started getting involved at the Baltimore Underground Science Space. In my personal life, I had for a long time been following this scientific discourse on gender and sexual variation that I was exposed to when I was in college in neuroscience classes, and I didn’t really know what to do with it yet.

For me as a non-binary queer person, to learn that there were people putting so much time and money into studying gender and sexual variance was really striking. There’s an immediate anxiety, when you see that people are working so hard to find genetic and neuronal and hormonal differences to define and categorize you (and making money off of it), but there’s also this element of curiosity involved when you see someone offering a neat and tidy deterministic explanation for your own experience. There’s also the underlying fear that the search for a cause, always has the potential to become the search for a cure, or some method of biopolitical regulation of subjectivities.

One of the areas that was really fascinating to me was the study of human pheromones. These experiments were very controversial because the way they were structured was filled with bias, and others were not able to reproduce the results consistently. But independent of any discussion of their validity as scientific contributions, they started to become folk knowledge as all these pop articles started circulating their claims: that women were happier and more productive in the presence of male sweat and male pheromones. I started to hear these ideas repeated, I think because it fit so conveniently into our binary socialization of man as a physical laborer and woman as the emotional laborer or the fem customer servant. And it was as if the studies were attempting to naturalize this social contract as reciprocal, innate, and inescapable: Male labor produces sweat, and optimizes the female to do emotional labor. This became my entry point, and I started imagining advertisements for a product that would take advantage and capitalize on this discourse. A desktop bioreactor housing engineered microbes that produce “male” pheremones, marketed to women as a mode of neoliberal empowerment -- or marketed to companies as a way to “optimize” the female worker.

As I dug deeper in the literature, I learned that a lot of pharmaceutical hormones used in birth control and hrt are actually produced by feeding plant oils to microbes during a fermentation process. These pharmaceutical production facilities are like massive prosthetic organs that modulate the enactment of binary gendered subjectivities. This invisible symbiotic relationship between our society and microbes which we’re reliant on for external production of hormones was really interesting, so I started exploring ways to create wearables that might foster a closer or more intentional symbiosis with these microbes.

But ultimately I was drawn more to the possibility of using metabolic engineering to develop a bioproduction system for sex hormones, and dedicate it to the public domain. This drew me I think because it has the potential to act on a poetic and performative level, as well as on a more pragmatic level -- becoming a platform to imagine and manifest desires into a queer technology, rather than just a speculative fiction or a “cultural critique.”

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ramauniversity977 · 5 months ago

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srmup · 8 days ago

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gedonelunemayhem · 8 years ago

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Since you guys wanted more context on Hero’s story, here she is arriving at the academy with her older brother.

It was my letter, my train ride, and my opportunity of a proper magical education, yet Cyrus seemed to be much more excited about it than me. I expected him to hurry me onto the car, but I didn’t expect him to follow me with his own bag in tow.

“Wait, you’re coming with?!”

“Of course! You’re my excuse to get a job somewhere away from home!”

“I feel used.”

“Oh, just get on!” He playfully pushed me further down the aisle of booths.

We settled at a table across from each other and waved to Mom as we waited for departure. Surprisingly, Mom seemed to be the most ready for us to go to the academy. Everyone knows she is the type to be prepared for just about anything, but even Cyrus was shocked to find she had already made snacks for the trip by the time we got home.

She was in the blue and white floral dress that brought out the blue tones in her steel eyes, and her dark brown hair was tucked into a braid. As usual, she presented herself as calm and organized.“I told Mr. Acceptance Letter that I could handle it from here,” she said sweetly. “Now go get your things! Your train arrives soon!”

As we packed our bags she gave us all the best advice she had to offer ranging from “everyone has the same basic rights” to “mixing bleach and rubbing alcohol makes chloroform” while she folded some laundry.

She said to take those last words of wisdom however we see fit.

Mom watched us with an expression of love and pride on her face as the train gradually began to leave. We were already in the countryside when I spoke for the first time during the ride.

“So, Cyrus. I hope you have a plan on how you’ll get along when we’re in Gedonelune.”

He put down his book and reached into his back pocket to pull out a letter. He held it up so I could see the delicate signature at the end of the page. I leaned forward in my seat to get a closer look, and the famous name left me astounded. I grabbed the letter from him and examined the writing. It was genuine.

“Walter Goldstein? What the hell are you doing to get a letter from Walter Goldstein of all people?”

Cyrus snatched the letter from my hands. “Remember when Sylvia offered me a tailoring job for the family she works for? Well it turns out they’re not just any random rich family. Mom contacted her yesterday and apparently this,” he waved the letter in front of me,”arrived this morning.”

I slumped back in my seat, slightly amazed and certainly amused over the excited smile that seemed frozen into his face. “You lucky bas-”

“Ay! Watch your language! You’re going to a prestigious school so that makes you both lucky and responsible for your foul mouth.”

“Cyrus, our dad was literally a sailor.”

“No excuses!”

“Fiiiiine,” I chuckled.

The rest of the time went by rather quietly. I slipped in and out of sleep a few times while watching the scenery go by, and Cyrus gently read part of his novel to me when I was awake to hear it.

“I believed the world to be a somber place since I was small. Nothing seemed to go my way and no one bothered to stick around for who I was as a person, and yet this magnificent being arrived into my life and practically forced it to get better. No matter the-”

...

I looked up at Cyrus to find he had closed his book completely. I followed his gaze out the window and realized why he had stopped.

“Oh my...”

The castle itself could be seen towering over the surrounding buildings, making them look like part of a child’s play set. The forests surrounding the city were a collage of rich greens and splashes of other colors, like the soft pinks of sakura and bold blues of bellflowers.The majestic scene drew closer, allowing us to see the people roaming up and down the lines of shops in fine clothing and high spirits. It didn’t seem real.

I glanced back at Cyrus for a moment and caught sight of his thrilled expression just before...

Pang.

My head felt like it had just been hit with a frying pan and I was light headed.

“Cyrus.”

He turned to me just as I curled into myself, hoping to subside the nausea that had begun churning. It was intense, almost painful. I clutched my stomach and breathed deeply.

I will not throw up, I will not throw up, I will not throw up!

And then, just as suddenly as it came, it disappeared. All I was left with was one intrusive thought: Booth 7

“Those dizzy spells are getting worse and worse, aren’t they? Maybe we could visit a pharma...”

Cyrus trailed off as I slowly rose from my seat and began stalking down the aisle toward booth 7. My heart rate quickened a bit and I grew tense as I drew closer to the table, which is why I nearly lost it when I heard a thud come from the area. I quickly pulled myself together and took the few more strides to stand in front of the booth.

I made it just in time to see a woman, no older than 30, throw water on a male attendant who appeared to have been trying to corner her. I was instantly seething.

“Excuse me, sir?” My tone was harsh, demanding, and hopefully downright scary.

The man whipped around, a guilty expression on his face, and backed out of the seat to stand facing me. He was about to utter some excuse in attempt to save himself, but I was having none of it.

“Listen. You’re obviously some sick person who may have done this more than once and I know there’s probably no getting through to you with my ‘what you’re doing is bad’ speech, so I’ll just get to the point.”

I glanced over to the woman, who Cyrus was now coaxing to go to our table.

“You won’t be sent to jail since you didn’t actually harm her and there’s likely no evidence of you doing so to anyone else, but you are definitely getting fired.” I reported the issue, and by the time we were in Gedonelune the man was fired.

“How did you know to help me,” the woman asked. “Was it because I made noise?”

“Uh...” How do I explain something like this? “No, I just got a bad feeling. I’m glad you’re safe, miss.”

“Yes, thank you. I was petrified. I can’t believe I could’ve just let that happen...”

“Next time don’t let it. Make a scene, that’s usually the last thing they want.”

If there’s only one thing I’ve got to be thankful for about my upbringing, it’s that my older brother ad I were taught to tolerate nothing like what happened on that train. Even so, nothing about how we were raised could explain the reason why those sudden headaches lead me to problems like that.

They’ve happened through a good amount of my life, and each time they happen I’m left with a thought that leaves me with an issue I can’t seem to let myself ignore. Being a good person can be a pain, really. Especially since they’ve been coming up more and more recently.

Cyrus and I were on our way to the academy when he brought up the dizzy spells again.

“You sure you don’t want to see someone about them? They seem to be happening more and more.”

I sighed and kicked a pebble off the cobblestone below me. “I don’t know... If they start to happen more or get worse at the academy then I guess I’ll bring it up. I’m sure I’ll be okay though.”

“You’re sure you’ll be alright? You’re telling me everything? I won’t tell Mom if something happened between you and som-”

I shoved him. “Cyrus, for the last damn time I’m not pregnant.”

We stopped in front of the gates where a man stood waiting. He was a bit taller than Cyrus, and carried himself in a dignified manner. His piercing violet gaze paired with his natural frown was enough to stop someone in their tracks and turn the other way. Despite this, he was certainly good-looking.

“You.” His voice was as sharp as his eyes. “Are you Hero Sternbild?”

“Yes, that’s me,” I said. Turning to my brother, I hugged him and ruffled his curly brown hair. “I’ll write you once I’m settled. Now go show Mr. Goldstein what you’ve got!”

“What about me?”

We stopped stiff, still holding onto each other, and looked at the man that greeted me.

“My name is Klaus Goldstein. What business do you have with me?”

I felt Cyrus relax. “Oh, well you must be his son. I didn’t know you went to the academy.”

Klaus scrunched his eyebrows, his glare somehow becoming sharper.

Despite the intimidating look, my brother stepped forward and held out his hand. “I’m Cyrus Sternbild. I’ll be working in your home as a tailor. It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

Klaus lost the glare, and held his hand out to shake. “I see. Father didn’t tell me that he’d be replacing Jonathan so quickly. I apologize.”

“Nah you’re fine. It’s good to meet you already.” Once again, he turned around and hugged me. “Go in there, learn your shit, and kick ass for your trial. You’re going to be amazing.”

“Thank you,” I whispered back. His words always made my heart warm and ready to take on the world. “Go and fix holes or something.”

We both let out a final breathy laugh, and finally I was sent with Klaus into the academy knowing we both had smiles on our faces.

#hero sternbild #cyrus sternbild #wizardess heart #mine #yeah #the meeting was awkward but it was meant to be #cyrus and hero were raised to be some of the kindest people that don't tolerate bullshit

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brianobrienny · 4 years ago

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B2B Sales In A Slow Economy: How New Business Relationships Can Fortify Your Future

There’s no denying that the recent pandemic has affected many businesses, big and small. Some have experienced a slow down in sales while others, unfortunately, had to close down.

COVID-19 has impacted the world in so many ways. It’s not just people’s health that’s hurting. Supply chains and businesses are greatly affected too.

Just like the virus, these changes are likely to evolve in the coming months, and we can expect to see newer ways of doing business in the near future. Here are just some of the ways B2B sales will change as a result of this pandemic.

If you’re part of the lucky group that was able to keep your business going. Here’s how you can still maintain those new relationships you’ve created before this pandemic happened.

Move your communications online

Some of your customers may be used to making orders online but some might not. Let them know that your website is live and operational and that they don’t need to visit your physical store to get their orders processed. This is especially important since you may be understaffed at the moment and there’s a limit to the number of customers you can accommodate in person.

Buyers demands are changing their needs from B2B businesses. They now expect the same amount of customer service the same way personal consumers would. They mainly want three things: speed, transparency, and expertise. Suppliers who provide an excellent digital experience are twice as likely to be chosen as a primary supplier over those who gave average or poor experiences.

Buyers have asked for frequent updates on the order fulfillment. They want to be informed of how the products are handled and shipped as well as the estimated time that it will be delivered.

Make sure your platform meets customer needs

Your website should be convenient and reliable to use otherwise, your customer might turn to your competitor to get what they need. Your platform should have relevant information, easy checkout, order tracking, and no errors.

There is now an increasing preference for making digital purchases rather than in-person. Because of this, businesses are opting to provide mobile app ordering and self-service options. Buyers cited that they strongly preferred using self-service across every stage of the buying journey.

B2B companies now believe that digital channels are twice as important as they were before. Countries like Spain and the UK rated high when evaluating its performance.

Companies have shifted most of their marketing efforts to digital selling. A third of these companies are optimistic that this model will be just as effective in the next 12 months after COVID-19 and are planning to keep this sales model.

More businesses are opting to use live chat as a way to research and interact with suppliers. Next to that are social media, text, and mobile.

Suppliers are diligent in marking in stock and out of stock items. This is because buyers want reassurance that the items they ordered will be shipped. They also have a strong preference for suppliers that provide better resources.

Highlight relevant products

No one likes to be bombarded with unnecessary product ads. During this time, your customers might only want to see products and services that are relevant to them. Make it a point to highlight only the products that can actually help them get through this pandemic. This may mean providing them with customized recommendations or offering a discount if they are in financial trouble. For example, Petit Collage launched a sale for a discounted price that was helpful to parents with kids at home who need more things to keep their mind active. Apple also did something similar in their App Store newsletter by recommending tools for learning while homeschooling, and methods of managing stress during extremely stressful times.

There is an increasing demand for consumer and retail products, meanwhile the demand within travel, transportation, and logistics has drastically decreased.

The production of products and services that are deemed non-essential will be reduced temporarily. B2B businesses are careful not to market products that are non-essential for fear of backlash.

Be alert for unmet needs

Keep an eye on your customer’s pain points because those could be great opportunities for innovative solutions. As mentioned in the previous point, what’s important right now are your customer’s needs. Pay attention to your interactions with them and see if you can create complementary services that fit what they are looking for.For example, Google Cloud has made Google Meet free to all G Suite customer globally.

Be transparent about stock and shipping

Things are still far from going back to normal which means that your stock may be limited or you could be experiencing some delays in shipping. It’s a normal inconvenience and everyone will understand why this is so. It’s important to be transparent to your customers so they know what to expect from you.

Despite the grim outlook on the economy’s health, a great number of businesses have actually increased their spend. For instance, American Airlines did this to boost their stocks in the beginning of the pandemic. The increase in budget spend can be seen across sectors like pharma, medical products, media, and technology. Sectors that have maintained or even decreased their budget are the travel and global energy industries.

Some companies that increased their budgets have chosen to do so to ensure that their employees are able to work from home and still receive a salary. This means their spend has gone towards software, VPNS, and firewalls.

Revenue for eCommerce businesses have increased to nearly 30% since COVID-19 began. Countries like Brazil and Italy have seen the highest increase in B2B revenue. Brazil has seen a 46% increase while Italy has had a 36% increase in sales.

80% of B2B companies have drastically decreased the quotas for their sales teams in response to COVID-19. Next to that, they have also decreased their short-term bonuses and incentives.

Companies have also decreased their spend on promotional ads. However, they have ramped up the release of educational content in the form of guides and webinars.

Continue using tools that are useful

If you use marketing tools to make B2B sales easier, don’t try to cut costs by stopping your subscription with them. If you can afford it, you should continue using those services. They help keep your sales going and it’s a great way to support businesses like yours. They too, might also be offering discounts and grace periods so take advantage of that. For instance, HubSpot made their conversational marketing tool for free.

Be proactive

Sales may be slowing down and this is definitely not the time to just sit back and wait for customers to come to you. You’ll need to work twice as hard to reach out to your customers from all possible channels whether it’s phone, email, or social media. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for referrals from your existing customers. If they are highly satisfied with your service, they won’t hesitate to bring more sales your way.

Look after your community

Your business should be more than just a means to make profit. It should also make a positive difference in people’s lives. And there is no better time to do it than now. Some great ways you can support your customers include:

Offering discounts and benefits to customers who are in affected areas

Prioritizing stock for customers who are making big bulk purchases

Offering return options that are easy to do and is not complicated for the customer

Extending the deadline for payments

Offer your services for free to community response teams

Use tools to engage your customers

The best chatbots work very subtly. Ideally, customers don’t even realize that they are talking to a machine learning tool! And, they feel helped, not sold too. Thus, chatbots also have to work subtly in their aim to facilitate the sales process.

The concept of growth marketing is strongly focused on data and how to use it to convert more prospects and drive sales. The growth marketer utilizes any and all data they have at their disposal to build demand and drive sales. The process takes a lot of experimentation to determine the best approach.

You can invest in growth marketing techniques to gain insight on how to best engage with your prospects and client base. In times like the pandemic lockdown, data will help you see how the tendencies of your customer base have changed and how you can best address the new dynamics.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are changing the ways that businesses operate. It is creating an automation revolution. By this year, 30% of B2B businesses are expected to use some form of AI to empower some part of their sales process.

If users feel too sold too by a chatbot, it creates a negative experience. It’s about providing service that helps them convert faster, rather than push sales immediately. Chatbots achieve this objective through a variety of techniques.

Maybe consider using a chatbot to engage with your customers. For example, here are a couple of great examples of how companies can use this in their marketing tactics in some simple steps:

Helping customers make up their mind and reach a decision — RapidMiner removed every lead capture form on their website and replaced them with chatbots. The objective was to use automated conversations to qualify leads and help direct people to the sales team that are expressly interested in RapidMiner’s solution. The chatbot was responsible for 10% of all new sales and created thousands of leads for the sales team.

Analyzing and identifying funnel positions and providing results to match — Essentially, RapidMiner’s chatbot was able to filter traffic based on the reason that a visitor arrived at the website, whether he or she was exploring the product for the first time, answering a technical support question or talking to someone in sales. By establishing these distinctions, the chatbot was able to segment traffic more efficiently and send only the most qualified leads to the sales team, thereby saving them the time and hassle of handling requests from unqualified persons.

Creating the appearance of a larger sales team — Anymail finder, an SaaS email verification software startup, realized that 90% of their big buyers were using the chat function before making a decision. But, the two-person team struggled to respond to every request. Introducing a chatbot equipped with answers to the most commonly asked questions gave Anymail finder the appearance of a large support department and encouraged more purchases from this important segment.

Offering resources that help leads make up their mind — Part of Anymail finder’s success was creating content that answered those commonly asked questions. These detailed articles were included in the chatbots responses. And, when visitors reached these content assets organically, they received an automated chat message unique to that page.

Which of these tips do you find the most helpful for your business? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

This post was authored by Grace Frenson.

Grace is a freelance writer from Philadelphia who recently graduated from Drexel University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration. She has a passion for marketing and writing.

The post B2B Sales In A Slow Economy: How New Business Relationships Can Fortify Your Future appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

B2B Sales In A Slow Economy: How New Business Relationships Can Fortify Your Future published first on http://rssmix.com/u/11592782/rss.xml

#Internet Marketing #Social Media Marketing #Email Marketing #Business

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rococoindia-blog · 7 years ago

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topmixtrends · 7 years ago

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IN THE LATE WINTER of 2013, Eli Broad stopped by the Broad Institute, a nonprofit scientific research center and his namesake. He had just announced that he was increasing his philanthropic gift to $700 million. Those of us working at the Institute that day — I was a data analyst at the time — gathered together on a glass staircase along an overlook, and, all ears, we peered down to the spacious first floor. Eric Lander, founder and director of the Institute, recounted the story of his courtship with Eli Broad, explaining how the benefactor had steadily increased his donations over the years. That day, as a thank you, Lander presented Broad with a collage of thousands of papers published by Institute scientists to show in substantive terms the work that had been completed with his money.

But, by then, a biotech fight had begun to escalate. It had everything to do with a tool the Broad had been developing. In 2011, a couple of years earlier, French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier published seminal work on the CRISPR-Cas9 system, which would soon be developed into a powerful gene-modification tool. Broad scientist Feng Zhang had learned about the system through a Google search, and his lab was one of five independent labs that developed CRISPR-Cas9 into a gene-editing technology by January 2013. Although this five-way tie suggests its development was an inevitable outcome of previous work, not everyone could own the key patents. As a high-profile patent battle for the technology ensued, tens of millions of dollars were funneled from Broad-spinoff Editas Medicine into the tax-exempt nonprofit Broad to fund its legal right to CRISPR-Cas9. Editas now has exclusive rights to the whole shebang for medical applications, which is already paying huge dividends — and includes a chest-thumping $737 million partnership with Juno Therapeutics to use CRISPR to engineer immune system T-cells to seek and destroy cancer cells.

Many scientists, including Charpentier, told me that if the Broad was a step ahead of other scientists, among the first to file an enforceable patent establishing what patent lawyers call “reduction-to-practice,” this was due to its wealth and rapidly deployable biotech apparatus. Cathedral-size industrial campuses like it are thus sprouting up for a reason. Novartis, a Juno competitor and biologics developer, built a new $600 million campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the same block as the $1.4 billion Broad Institute. Such concentrations of power inside science are undoubtedly an ongoing trend, which means we can expect science to be dominated by large scientific hubs positioned to corner resources and patents, and price drugs as high as the market will allow.

On August 30, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first genetically engineered T-cell, an immune cell which is designed to seek and destroy a child’s leukemia. Novartis will sell it in the United States for $475,000, a price nine times the median income in the United States. The price-tag is vexing because general estimates for these biologic medicines cite a manufacturing cost of $25,000. In October, the FDA approved the second genetically engineered T-cell for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which Kite Pharma will sell for $373,000. These are the first in a new class of biologic medicines that alter our very genes, seeking and destroying all sorts of cancers including solid tumors — and which carry staggering price-tags. This will intensify pressure on our health care system and the national debate on equal access to insurance. Indeed, biotech solutions can be sold on a mythos that a group of improbable scientists with a unique set of talents invented a technology that they should be allowed to sell for as much as possible. Keep in mind, though, that most of these technologies were developed over decades by many academic scientists and paid for by taxpayers. The price of the drug thus reflects a kind of cognitive dissonance — between the collective spirit of publicly funded science and the increasingly brutal fight for control of highly profitable technologies. Entangled in patent fights, Novartis didn’t invent its new drug, but rather, it licensed a piece of the technology from the taxpayer-funded research of University of Pennsylvania scientists, who, as is almost invariably the case, were building on previous work.

Concentrated power in the life sciences is shaping a research community that is far more hierarchical than in the past and driven by investors demanding the most profitable biotech solutions. Large nonprofit centers like the Broad will only accelerate this trend. For instance, Broad-spinout Editas, which has its grip on medical applications for CRISPR in human cells, is entangled in a web of transaction deals, which means the first genetically engineered T-cells created with CRISPR may not cost $475,000 but much more.

In 1980, the Bayh-Dole Act permitted federally funded research to be patented and transferred to private parties. Soon after, the first biotech patents were upheld, notably for recombinant DNA, which are techniques for splicing and altering genes. CRISPR is now the latest of such techniques. Since then, publicly funded science has shifted to finding drug targets as well as tools that can be spun-out and monetized. This shift to using science to subsidize competitive business interests has consequences. Top-heavy scientific institutions, which have what I call a “quasi-corporate governance,” can provide salaries into the seven figures for managerial scientists and administrators, place company founders into their nonprofit leadership, and hold stock in those companies they start up. The lines can easily be blurred between a science nonprofit and corporate interests. They can also hire strong legal teams and spend lavishly on marketing arms. They are, after all, designed to compete to create products for profit. In short: Their raison d’être is not promoting “public health” but rather turning rare diseases and cancer into profitable business enterprises — into drugs we subsidize, but which we may not all afford.

Will there be recoil? Science is clearly evolving from its early stages when it depended on taxpayer subsidies to elucidate many basic mechanisms (e.g., sequencing the human genome, and creating roadmaps of epigenetic molecules that bind and regulate DNA), to a new era in which companies begin to fund more of their own basic research. Insofar as this is true, they may, and indeed should, begin to fund more of their enterprise. I have argued in the Boston Globe and STAT that biotech-focused science hubs should ease off of taking public grant money, since these hubs primarily function as business subsidies for generating high-profit drugs and technologies. In retort, Lander and Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, wrote an urgent op-ed in the Washington Post titled “Miracle Machine” asking for more public funding, appealing to their own economic interests.

But economics — or the Miracle Machine, if you want to call it that — does not work fairly for everyone, especially in an age when some scientists have the resources to crush their competition and are then able to defend their positions with teams of lawyers. The game is even less fair for consumers hoping to access those drugs. In response to the Lander-Schmidt article, Michael Eisen, a UC Berkeley computational biologist and now US Senate candidate, unleashed a firestorm of incredulous tweets directed at the hypocrisy of elite scientists and investors calling for public funds in such desperate terms. At the same time, he pointed out that researchers and technicians without status have ever-diminishing job security, their jobs typically secure for no more than a year or two.

the #MiracleMachine is fueled by people, and the biggest challenge we face now is that stable careers in basic research are disappearing

— Michael Eisen (@mbeisen) May 7, 2017

Financial competition in the life sciences is being intensified by nonprofit scientific hubs and their industrial partners by means of “free-market philanthropy” or “philanthrocapitalism.” Donating philanthropic money to scientific hubs seems to be a magnanimous act. But it emboldens scientific elites to leverage their newfound wealth to fight for their own business causes, and so for the most profitable drugs. Clearly, these tax-free institutions will be best positioned to win federal grants, since they can claim they have the apparatus and resources to put grants to best use, creating a positive feedback loop in which money flows to the most powerful entities. Venture investors who retain close ties to those institutions will get first dibs on investment opportunities, and it will thus be increasingly important to know the people running these institutions.

Being perched at the top of a big organization will be ever more valued in science as resources are increasingly stockpiled, often under the appeal of “collaboration,” “consolidation of big data,” and, in Napster co-founder and cancer philanthropist Sean Parker’s terms, to “eliminate systemic inefficiencies.” At the same time, scientific hubs will draw on deft salesmanship to enlist the tax-base; indeed, they are already trying to make themselves appealing to a neo-libertarian view — in other words, to an idealistic progressive view that suggests we can ultimately eliminate everything from cancer to schizophrenia.

The neo-libertarian view assumes that people are essentially good — even perfectible — and that “self-anointed” leaders, including those in biotech, should be “unconstrained” by regulation and moral checks because they are ushering us into a world that is more disease-free and equitable for everyone. Under this unconstrained or utopian view, biotech leaders argue that they are brokering a brighter future. But with drugs priced in the high six figures, the dystopian reality is that scientists may be leading us into an ever more unequal future. By contrast, the tragic version of human nature, otherwise known as the “constrained view,” acknowledges that people are guided by innate self-interests and so society requires checks and balances, and constraints. It is the neo-libertarian view that is currently prevailing in the life sciences.

The $3 billion Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a limited liability company, which allows it to shield managerial salaries while promising to “advance human potential.” The Initiative’s $600 million Biohub, a nonprofit nested at the University of California and Stanford University, aims to fund “risky, sexy science” in a quest to “cure all diseases” while maintaining exclusive rights to commercial patents. The $1.8 billion Cancer Moonshot promises to “end cancer as we know it.” And, while speaking at a Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit called “Hacking Cancer,” Sean Parker said his $250 million Sean Parker Cancer Initiative will make “big bold bets” while maintaining its right to prosecute patents and take proceeds on patents that turn into blockbuster drugs. The Broad Institute has produced videos suggesting we’re on the verge of hacking the brain’s “Black Box,” turning schizophrenia into an engineering problem with a data solution — one it hopes to make money on.

We are thus entering a new era in medicine in which we will see million-dollar gene and cellular biologic medicines. This will include using CRISPR and other gene modification tricks to alter immune cells to fight cancer, and to restore the workings of our own cells and tissues. Scientists have developed the tools to modify our genes to fix diseases such as the brain wasting disease called adrenoleukodystrophy and the rare eye disease called Leber congenital amaurosis. None of this will come cheaply. As Jeffrey Marrazzo, chief executive of Philadelphia-based Spark Therapeutics, which intends to bring the first gene therapy drug to market in the United States for the rare eye disorder, told The New York Times, it should be worth a lot to keep your eyesight, and so “[w]e should be compensated for generating that value.” Indeed, many entrepreneurial life scientists see their role as disruptive innovators, not far removed from early computer developers. But there are important differences. Forgoing a high-priced electronic device is not a tragedy, but going without a medical treatment often is. And taxpayers are required to subsidize basic research, so arguably companies have an obligation to ensure access and affordability to consumers. Once the biotech sector begins to take on responsibility for funding its basic research, and is no longer so wholly dependent on the US government to fund the work that feeds into its profitable pipelines, this argument for limiting the power of biotech will become less defensible.

In 1893, Thomas Henry Huxley wrote in “Evolution and Ethics” that the conflict in acquiring biological resources will define us “as long as the world lasts.” He was fascinated by how social progress and culture emerge as an “artificial world within the cosmos” to check the evolutionary struggle. Cultural forces could be used to promote fairness, or unfairness. Biotech, rapidly becoming ever more sophisticated, may be the most powerful cultural force the world has known — and it looks increasingly unfair. Forms of eugenics, in vitro fertilization, and the transformations of our very genes and cells into profitable biologic medicines for investor-first culture are already being normalized, and inequalities are therefore accelerating. Indeed, the “artificial world” of biotech, rather than an equitable cultivating force in society that promotes access to medicines and health for the poor and disenfranchised, is enhancing the wealth of elite scientists and their lawyers, while making medicine far more expensive and harder to afford.

In his essay “The Virtue of Scientific Thinking” in the Boston Review, Harvard science historian Steven Shapin wrote about how intense competition to survive in the sciences is being further fueled by an investment-culture that turns publicly funded science into an art of self-interested salesmanship, while jeopardizing its virtue. Siddhartha Roy and Marc A. Edwards co-wrote an essay entitled “Science is Broken” in Aeon, in which they describe a climate of “pathological publishing,” driven by insecurity and career anxiety. When a full 76 percent of the academic workforce is composed of adjunct or part-time workers, its members are incentivized to cheat or exaggerate claims. This toxic environment is exacerbated by a top-heavy management culture.

None of this is what we might call a public good, since the jobs for common workers have little security or pay and consumers have to look forward to a new class of gene and cell therapy medicines costing a half-million dollars per treatment, thus compromising their ability to gain fair access to health care. In short, what is happening in the New Gilded Age is happening in science, which is looking less and less like one of the last remaining vestiges of truth and free inquiry. This may be one reason for the rise of citizen science — people are fascinated by science but don’t trust the institutions.

The trouble with big science is essentially that it is a profiteering enterprise. It leverages our worst fears about cancer and other life-threatening diseases to make high-margin profits from biologic medicines. The Broad, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and other philanthropic outfits are not the problem per se, but they have the potential to vastly accelerate the problem, contributing to new power imbalances and giving biotech a mandate to pursue the most profitable solutions. Scientists must realize we are living in a time of low institutional trust. And yet science is a public trust insofar as taxpayers fund much of the incremental research that leads to breakthroughs. This trust has never been more in jeopardy.

In a nutshell: taxpayer funding now supports the engines of biotech and it is contributing to inequalities in access to high-priced medicines. It requires checks. But voters have recently turned down initiatives in California and Ohio to cap the costs of medicines. People don’t like the idea of interfering with free markets. But, insofar as science is being monetized, it is, I believe, undergoing a seismic shift: academia is transitioning from an age of primarily basic research of broad public utility into one emphasizing applications and translational medicines. If I am right, then the academic climate of science is disappearing: NIH funding and US government life-support is increasingly a business subsidy benefiting the elite.

Jim Kozubek is the author of Modern Prometheus: Editing the Human Genome with Crispr-Cas9, published by the Cambridge University Press.

The post The Trouble with Big Science appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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#Los Angeles Review of Books #topmixtrends

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