Jack Andraka, a 15-year-old kid from Maryland, just won the world’s largest high-school science competition by creating a new test for pancreatic cancer, one of the nastiest and most lethal forms of the disease.
According to various news reports, the winning submission at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair is “28 times cheaper” than existing tests and far, far more accurate. Andraka received $75,000 for his efforts, and he’s applied for a patent as well. That will probably earn him far more in the years to come.
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This comes on the heels of another teen wunderkind. In December, Angela Zhang, 17, won the Siemens Science Competition for inventing a new way of finding and attacking cancer cells. Some people think it might actually lead to a cure for cancer someday.
Zhang and Andraka can probably spend the rest of their high-school careers playing video games in the basement, given that their college search is going to be pretty stress-free from here on out.
But that’s the real world for you. Impressive kids — or grown-ups — invent fantastic things, potentially benefitting millions of people, if not all of mankind. The inventors are rewarded, consumers benefit, and the economy grows. Woo-hoo!
Of course, the real world isn’t the world many people imagine it to be. In the Hollywood version of this tale, Zhang would have disappeared when rumors of her invention hit the boardrooms and star chambers of Big Pharma. Bruce Willis would have to come out of retirement as the rogue agent willing to put his life on the line to keep Andraka safe from the goon-squad ninjas of Bristol-Myers Squibb or the Wetworks teams from Pfizer.
After all, cures and cheaper tests hurt the bottom line of those evil corporations, and we all know profit is all they care about. I mean, haven’t you read or seen The Constant Gardener, the John le Carré book and movie about evil corporations testing drugs on Africans and offing the whistle-blowers at every turn?
That’s what corporations do, right? At least that’s what my kid is taught. In Beethoven, the evil munitions industry shoots Saint Bernards to test bullets. In The Lorax, businesses hate trees. In The Muppets, they hate Muppets (and love oil). I think that in nearly every movie involving cute woodland creatures (Furry Vengeance, Yogi Bear, et al.), businesses are always the bad guys.
When kids get older, they learn from John Grisham movies that big businesses kill people in order to get what they want. In Aliens, the company wants to smuggle space critters that will likely wipe out all humanity, in the slim hope they’ll eke out a bit more profit. In Avatar, the Halliburton of the future slaughters intelligent aliens and rapes their planet just to make a buck.
At Cannes, where anti-capitalist movies are always a hit, Brad Pitt’s newest venture, Killing Them Softly, is touted as a seething indictment of the American system. “America isn’t a country — it’s a business” is apparently the film’s central insight. Set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis, the film was reportedly financed by Megan Ellison, daughter of billionaire businessman Larry Ellison.
No wonder that when these kids grow up, some of them make documentaries about how vast conspiracies keep the electric car and, no doubt, the Everlasting Gobstopper off the market. Even more of them uncritically accept this stuff. After all, everyone knows big businessmen are evil.
So the ones getting involved in politics, at least Republican politics, must be the sorts of bad guys we’ve all seen in the movies.
Warren Buffett and George Soros can’t be greedy; after all, they’re simply trying to “give something back.”
Now, truth be told, I’m no lover of big corporations, but not because I think they want to poison their customers or shoot my dog for target practice. My problem isn’t that they’re too rapaciously capitalistic.
Rather, it’s that they’re too opportunistic, too eager to abandon the free market and work with the government under the false flag of the greater good.
In a free market, businesses are in a relentless competition to improve products and satisfy the needs of the consumer. “A new test for pancreatic cancer? Great! Let’s be the first to get it to market.”
In the cozy world of government-business collusion, the state counts on the status quo existing far out into the future, for that’s the only way to preserve and plan out “the system.”
There’s got to be a good movie plot in there somewhere.
Here's one tax idea Tea Party/Republicans should get behind, given Clooneywood's emphatic backing of Obama: a 50% excess-movie-gross tax on the portion of Hollywood movie grosses over $100 million.
After all, I don't think it's really 'fair' that someone should get really rich just because they had an story idea about shark attacks or ships hitting an iceberg.
Imperiled children, orange fireballs, that swooshing sound effect, the president, business oafs, all these are evidence of Hollywood's lazy reliance on cliches, and shouldn't be taken as an effort to say anything other than: "Cut! Print!"
One of the better trilogies (although it tailed off as it progressed, as most do) was the “Underworld” trilogy. How nice that it was just a clean case of vampires against werewolves. No politics or Leftist dribble needlessly inserted.
Or did I miss something? I mean, I have to agree with Jonah, the anti-business message is very very common these days in movies. In the case of “Underworld,” were the vampires a stand-in for blood-sucking capitalists? And were the werewolves (a slave class in the trilogy) a stand-in for the Occupy Wolf Streeters?
I may have to go back and check again. Jonah’s got me to thinking.
Underworld is a Marxist fable, just for an earlier stage of the class struggle. Vampires represent the arrogant feudal aristocracy, werewolves the peasants led by a cadre of their more progressive members [bourgeoisie].
Oddly, the vampire versus werewolf myth is of pre-Underworld but modern origin. I am not sure where it started, but it is not authentic mythology. And it always casts them in these class roles. Although sometimes one is meant to sympathize with the vampires, being less numerous, more intellectual and civilized, and usually on the edge of dying off. And the werewolves being the barbarians or rapacious peasants bearing pitchforks in the name of dark forest superstition.
Recent or no, a rich cultural vein. Pun not intended, at least not at first.
Okay, I KNEW there was must have been more to "Underworld" than full moons, coffins, and Kate Beckinsale looking particularly hot in that tight black number she’s wearing.
Great analysis, Random. I find it easier sometimes to just turn off my brain and enjoy the movie. Sometimes I miss stuff. But it’s the only way I can get through any movie with Tim Robbins in it, for instance.
Well of course the company wanted to secure those aliens. If Burke had reported it through channels, the administration would have stepped in and there would have been no exclusive rights for anyone.
I've seen NRO criticize the Lorax (both the book and the movie) a few times, and while I haven't seen the movie I want to defend the book. The Lorax is one of my favorite books and I became a conservative (and a conservationist). It's true that the bad guy in the Lorax is a businessman - but the book doesn't deliver the message that he HAS to be bad or even that everything he does is bad. The problem is presented as one of excess. Cutting down a few trees seems ok, but it is only when he goes large scale without doing anything to replenish the trees (replanting, for example) do the bad things happen - and they happen to the Once-ler as well as to everyone else. His business fails for lack of trees. And the Once-ler is not a monster, an irredeemable evil person - when he sees that he went too far he changes. The lesson to take away is not that all business is bad - but that you have to plan for the future.
Hunters know this. You don't see too many of them complaining about hunting season being limited or complaining about the number of kills per season. They don't want their prey to go extinct. They should be so lucky to have a movie where they are treated as well as the Lorax treats businessmen. At least the Once-ler isn't killing Bambi's mother.
I was just checking out the Wikipedia page on the Lorax and saw this statement about the TV special made in the 1970s: "The special also features more of an in-depth look at the problems, including the Once-ler arguing with himself about what he is doing, and at one point asking the Lorax if shutting down his factory (and putting hundreds of people out of a job) is really the answer. Many of the Lorax's arguments seem to be focused on how "progress progresses too fast", in a sense arguing that things might've been better if the Once-Ler had come to a balance with the forest and slowed down production of the Thneeds."
I don't remember the details of the TV special and the statement didn't provide a source so i can't vouch for the accuracy of the statement - but I find it interesting and someone exonerating for Dr. Suess. What could be more conservative than "progress progresses too fast" - meaning we need to be sure we know what we're doing and where we're going before charging ahead?
Yeah, or "Wall Street", where they made out the guy, with the perfect hair, who buys up a company just to destroy it and make profits of the destruction is the "bad guy".
Then again, it never made much sense. What would the company's bioweapons division have done with the things? Hopelessly beyond any kind of control, and with such an elaborate gestation process, and with the end product of a new adult alien, they would have been of no tactical use. Presuming, in the unseen universe beyond the stories, earth had to wage wars against other planet, I suppose there would be a critical mass of eggs [not many] you could unload from space and thereby overwhelm and exterminate a civilization. But you could never safely exploit or settle the conquest without first nuking it to kill the aliens, so what would be the point? The planet would still be uninhabitable and, if that is the ultimate goal, why not just nuke it in the first place?
Extraplanetary genocide is a serious subject. It needs economy of resources, not overthinking with wicked cool alien mutants.
Goldberg: "Now, truth be told, I’m no lover of big corporations, but not because I think they want to poison their customers or shoot my dog for target practice. My problem isn’t that they’re too rapaciously capitalistic.
Rather, it’s that they’re too opportunistic, too eager to abandon the free market and work with the government under the false flag of the greater good."
Yes, but you are being too euphemistic when you do not use the words Fraud and Theft.
I'm simply too heartened by the news of Andraka and Zhangs' discoveries to comment on the Hollywood v. Big Business aspect of it all, and only wonder now how long it will take the greater medical community to get on board with actually administering their tests/treatments (what with them being mere teenagers and all).
For better or worse, there are millions of people who are convinced that if their careers are doing badly or they’re unemployed or otherwise not prospering then it must be because someone else (probably “the rich") who stole what was rightfully theirs. Just as surely as there are millions who are convinced that American employers really could afford to pay $50./hour (plus gold-plated benefits) for semi-skilled work- but they don’t because the CEO makes too much.
Did anyone ever go broke telling people what they want to hear?
And then there’s the nature of movies. A few have complex plots, but it’s rare. If you wanted to make a successful movie, would you make one that revolved around making a complex economic argument (such as explaining how tough, unpopular choices can produce short-term pain but long-term gain)? Or would you make one where the audience can jeer the black hats and cheer the white hats?
To state the obvious(?): a movie is not a book. A book can (but doesn’t have to) deal in long, complex arguments. But, movies tend to be best when they immerse the viewer in raw emotion.
Well, I disagree. What about movies like Iron Man/Avengers? Tony Stark is unapologetically capitalist. And he's the good guy. In the new Avengers movie, when Captain America asks, "Without the suit, what are you?" Tony Stark replies, "Genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist."
And then Batman. He's filthy rich. And he's the good guy. So was his dad.
I realize that vast majority of businessmen in film are bad, but not EVERY one. And with the popularity of characters like Batman and Iron Man, I think we might be able to change the general outlook of business. Maybe...
Jonah, quit whining and write your pro biz script. When conservatives complain about hollywood I always wonder why they don't just make their own movies and shut up. And then I saw Atlas Shrugged....
1. Of course corporations are not committed to capitalism. It is not in any particular company's interest that markets be free; what IS is their interest is that regulations favor them, and that the state ensure they not pay the price for their mistakes. In a very real sense, we are ANTI-business.
2. Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps the reason Hollywood always sees business as evil is that it is there that the most rapacious, dishonest, and cuthroat business model thrives? This occurred to me many years ago, on seeing JC Superstar. The model for Herod was -- a producer! They are just portraying the companies they know.
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