The Hindu Business Line : The fractal-print of biotechnology

IT HAS been said that biotechnology is the hope for the future — the great equaliser that will abolish the North-South divide and solve the most difficult problems in health-care, food security and sustainable development. Vegetables and plants that are immune to parasites, taste good and are rich in nutrients; medicines that will cure any and every conceivable disease; gene therapies that will prolong life and give one whatever abilities one wants, are some of the promised benefits.

No wonder that in just 20 years since the initial success of Genentech in 1980, biotechnology forms the basis of a multibillion-dollar global industry. The total number of biotechnology companies has been estimated at 4,000, globally. According to Ernst and Young's 2003 Global Biotechnology Report, there are estimated be 600 publicly traded biotechnology companies. Reported revenues from these companies have been pegged at approximately $42B. Further and significantly, the biotechnology industry has been estimated to triple in size in the last decade.

Yet, the industry has also been surrounded by a host of controversial issues, and many of the claimed successes have been followed by problems in their wake. For example, the relatively recent case of one of the leaders in the genetically modified (GM) soybean category — Monsanto's Roundup Ready.

These soybeans were genetically modified to become resistant to applications of glyphosate — the active ingredient in Monsanto's popular herbicide, Roundup. Significantly, it should be noted that Roundup, along with other glyphosate products, accounts for 40 per cent of Monsanto's annual sales. The sales, hence, of Roundup Ready, is directly related to that of Roundup, and vice-versa.

To begin with, the notion of creating genetically-modified foods that are resistant to key products in a company's own portfolio, and then selling them in tandem, is itself controversial. But this aside, it has often been noted by researchers that GM crops yield less by area than other non-GM crops, probably due to soil degradation. Further, the free use of increasing doses of herbicides, encouraged with the rise of use of this category of GM crops, is a major source of pollution of groundwater and rivers. These are some of the known effects.

Add to this the unknown effects from gene manipulation, and the controversies begin to mount. For genes are supposed to carry the information for the construction and management of life, and manipulating these without full knowledge of what is really being done, could easily result in a vast number of completely unforeseen and even deleterious side-effects.

Similar controversial examples can be found in any of the application areas of biotechnology. Hence, the crucial question as to what is to be done arises. Is the promise of biotechnology more alluring than the obstacles along the way? Have new business models to be created to assuage the attendant controversies?

Perhaps, a look at fractal dynamics for insights into the nature of the problem and, hence, its solution . Establishing the fractal-print of biotechnology is the first step. For this one has to turn to the very genesis of modern-day biotechnology.

Modern-day biotechnology is the result of replicating in the laboratory and then in industrial-size containers, various cellular-level operations by using a range of cellular substances, such as DNA, RNA, or a host of other proteins.

To illustrate, as in the case of Genentech, its initial success was due to being able to produce proteins that were marketable. A gene for a useful protein, such as human insulin, could conceivably be inserted into a bacterium, which, in turn, would start manufacturing the protein. This process could then be repeated on a manufacturing scale to create vast quantities of insulin. This is, in fact, what Genentech did.

It is to be noted however, that these operations, such as using bacterium to churn out large quantities of protein, is not something that has been thought-out or arrived at through a comprehensive conceptual understanding of the operation of the cell and its components, or the vast number of interrelationships that exist at the level of the cell.

Rather, it has been observed. That is the process, the flow by which cells and other entities at the microscopic level work, have been observed and then replicated by bringing these entities together elsewhere, as in a laboratory.

This is abundantly evident from a study of the works of James Watson, one of the discoverers of the DNA, and a recognised authority on biotechnology. This mimicking of flows is at best, nothing other than vital-level dynamics.

This becomes more apparent when we consider that the field of thought following the observation has itself remained local. That is, the concerned have looked for what is happening in their immediate area of attention, in the cell of their focus, say, without adequately considering the vast number of possible changes that could occur in the interaction and interrelationship of the local cell with other cells of different kinds, in the rest of the system under observation.

The thought that has been created is, thus, too tied to the area of focus. It has not been extrapolated or heightened or sufficiently synthesised and, hence, cannot be said to have entered the realm of the mental-level.

If it had, a more complete conceptual framework would have resulted, and even non-local processes or flows would have been mapped. Correspondingly, it could more confidently be said that mental-level dynamics had been employed in the creation of biotechnology.

This not being the case however, the field of biotechnology, as practiced today, can more appropriately be thought of as being at best a combination of a set of physical- and vital-level dynamics.

Hence, its fractal journey has not been completed. Its defining pattern, its fractal-print, therefore, comprises of something of the physical-level and something of the vital-level only, to remain immature at best. To allow a whole industry to crop up based on immature or incomplete knowledge is bound, therefore, to create controversy after controversy. By contrast, the fractal-print of the digital industry, for example, comprises of components at all three levels.

It is a mature fractal-print and, hence, has been able to have tremendous positive affects on the whole fabric of life.

Witness today, the convergence of a range of formerly isolated industries in the simple instrument of a mobile phone — entertainment, financial, computer, communications, among others — and only because the digital theory behind all these technologies has been adequately understood and hence, masterfully manipulated.

Keeping the notion of fractal completion in mind (see "Fractal Space: A new dynamics of organisation," Business Line, December 17), there is no doubt that the biotechnology industry is headed toward fulfilment of its promises.

However, unlike the digital industry, whose theory and mathematics had to a large extent already been worked out before the world began to display the aggressive vital dynamics characteristic of the business world's vital-level fractal positioning, the biotechnology industry was caught up in the whirl of vital dynamics almost at its very inception.

From a fractal dynamics point of view, through the property of lateral-fractal-influence (Business Line, December 17), the business-world fractal has influenced the fractal-print of biotechnology to arrest it at the vital level. Hence, today, the biotechnology industry has become a huge financial machine that demands constant lubrication to provide its stakeholders with financial returns.

Hundreds of companies have to be kept active; thousands of people have to remain employed and products have to be churned out yearly, regardless of their true merit, depth and adequacy of research that may have been conducted in bringing them out.

Extensive marketing has to continue. Extensive numbers of people have to continue to be allured to the future promise of biotechnology as though it were being provided today. In other words, the fractal-print of biotechnology has to play out according to the dynamics characteristic of its nature. This is, of course, unless the fractal-print can itself be altered. This would entail completing the fractal-journey, to move into a truer understanding of the cell and its components and its complete set of interactions and interrelationships, representative of the mental-level.

This would likely require a different model for conducting business (see "Motive forces for a new business model", Business Line, April 18.). Then, perhaps, something of the grand promise of biotechnology will begin to be more concretely felt.

(The author is founder of Aurosoorya, a firm specialising in creativity and innovation, and has consulted with several organisations worldwide. He can be reached at: thefuture@aurosoorya.com)

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