Thanks to Stanford Business School’s unique class offering called Critical Analytical Thinking, I ended up reading a book that I wouldn’t read if it wasn’t for the class: Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. It is a greak book about a major cholera outbreak in Victorian London, but in its essence, it is full of gems that I would integrate into my investigative thinking process against hard-to-crack situations and endeavors. In fact, I have read the book for the second time to make sure that I am not missing some key messages and I actually found new things with the second pass.

One important idea that hit me while reading the book was about an alternative approach in fighting contagious diseases, such as the recent swine flu case. My key question is this: Could we create medicine that is infectious, but in a positive way? What would happen if biotech companies start investing resources in creating microorganisms that can immunize or treat people against diseases such as tuberculosis or cholera and that are air-borne or water-borne? Think about the implications of such an advancement assuming that is is somehow achievable. Think about pouring a ton of swine flu antibodies into Los Angeles municipal water tanks and letting millions of people getting ‘infected’ with swine flu immunization. Doesn’t it sound powerful?

I wonder the barriers for such advancement in medicine. From a cost perspective, how much R&D budget would it require to develop it, and could the efficiency gains in distribution compensate for those investments? Would biotech/pharma companies be concerned about loss of control on their revenue stream? From a technology perspective, if nature is prone to existence of violent viruses that are contagious, what is the limiting factor for artificial creation of contagious benefical microorganisms?