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Biotech booms in China

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Re: Biotech booms in China

#21

Post by aaavl2821 »

China has one big advantage vs the US when it comes to future innovation potential in biotech: a large cohort of talented young professionals being trained in drug discovery and development

Big pharma organizations in the US and Europe have been cutting r&d workforces for years, and most small biotech startups that are filling the innovation gap hire execs with 20+ years of experience to design and manage the research and outsourcing the actual work to china. Wuxi, a large contract research org in china, employs like 1-2,000 discovery chemists. I think Pfizer employs maybe 100

Re: Biotech booms in China

#22

Post by qiqing »

stevenwoo wrote: post #19
qiqing wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fundamentally a lot less concerned about killing people in the process That's rather flippant, and I'd like to provide a counterpoint. Some neuroscience researchers held a town hall discussion in a major US city and also in a major Chinese city (on two different occasions) about bioethics, and one of the topics discussed was whether it was morally right or wrong (in the case of IVF) to screen for IQ, assuming we ha…

On the other hand, the accepted use of selective gender abortion (where the problem made the male/female ratio out of wack especially in rural areas IIRC) in China versus the controversialness of abortion being legal in the USA (re: the persistence of attempts to limit access but observing the minimal literal interpretation of Roe v. Wade) might explain a willingness to let people make choices in China over the USA.…

> might explain a willingness to let people make choices in China

Annoying things I sometimes hear from relatives during family re-unions:

* Is it true that abortion isn't legal in the U.S.? (Of course, it's allowed, but not in all places, and ... it's complicated.)

* How come people don't understand that climate change is real? Is it because creationism is taught in schools? (Well, it's not like that in all places...)

* So did those comments from Trump become public before or after the election? People must have felt duped that they voted for this kind of person, right? (Actually, those came out before the election. I have no words. ::shakes head::)

Things I might ask them that are annoying:

* I thought gender-selection abortion is illegal. What's with the ratio? (Ugh. Country-people* and their backwards attitudes about gender. You'd think that top-down mandated equal-work-for-equal-pay for a generation would have changed a few things. At least city people have reasonable attitudes.) Yeah, so how are they able to do it? (Never underestimate what a determined Chinese person will figure out how to accomplish.)

* Wait, I thought country people expect their daughters to venture into manufacturing hubs to be breadwinners for the whole family? (Yeah, exactly. They totally baby the boys.)

(Country-people is the closest thing to a racial slur I've heard in China. The amount of prejudice I hear it uttered with me makes me quite uncomfortable.)

Re: Biotech booms in China

#23

Post by whatshisface »

qiqing wrote: post #18
justinjlynn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, some founders will then see any valid criticism of their methods and/or business practices and frame it as China-bashing. It's bad for everyone, including investors and the world at large, and I really wish the racist nonsense would stop.

One of the privileges of being a U.S.-based founder is internationally, no one asks you to answer for the actions of Uber, Exxon, or pharma bro as though all companies in the U.S. came from one homogenous mass. I'm not talking about criticisms of a particular company when it's the one being discussed. Should Theranos be criticized for their own failings? Yes. Should every U.S. startup be suspected of being similar be…

I wouldn't mind it if someone pressed me about those companies, Uber can absolutely be managed on the local government level, and the other bad stuff that these big companies do is within the range of activism. It's not 100% my responsibility, but there's probably at least a 1 a few zeroes after the decimal.

Secondly, when one company gets away with something in the US, we have a fairly good reason to believe that other companies could get away with something similar. So, if I were a person in any country (even the US), and I needed to decide whether or not I could trust a US company not to do something to me, legal precedent in the US would actually be very relevant.

To make this concrete, I bet Europeans have become rightfully wary by now about the data privacy implications of banking/shopping or otherwise making an account with US business.

Re: Biotech booms in China

#24

Post by seanmcdirmid »

stevenwoo wrote: post #19
qiqing wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fundamentally a lot less concerned about killing people in the process That's rather flippant, and I'd like to provide a counterpoint. Some neuroscience researchers held a town hall discussion in a major US city and also in a major Chinese city (on two different occasions) about bioethics, and one of the topics discussed was whether it was morally right or wrong (in the case of IVF) to screen for IQ, assuming we ha…

On the other hand, the accepted use of selective gender abortion (where the problem made the male/female ratio out of wack especially in rural areas IIRC) in China versus the controversialness of abortion being legal in the USA (re: the persistence of attempts to limit access but observing the minimal literal interpretation of Roe v. Wade) might explain a willingness to let people make choices in China over the USA.…

Gender abortion isn't legal in China. In fact, they aren't allowed to tell you the sex of our kid. When we did our first comprehensive ultra-sound at UFH Beijing, the technician couldn't say anything but hinted to my wife that we were having a boy. Oh well...

The point is that gender selective abortions are absolutely not legal in China. However, it is difficult to tell why you are aborting, and it is easy to look at your ultra sound pictures and tell.

(Anyways, our son is great despite me wanting a girl!)

The nongminren might have a different outlook, but in the cities girls are perfectly acceptable and welcomed.

Re: Biotech booms in China

#25

Post by qiqing »

whatshisface wrote: post #23
qiqing wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the privileges of being a U.S.-based founder is internationally, no one asks you to answer for the actions of Uber, Exxon, or pharma bro as though all companies in the U.S. came from one homogenous mass. I'm not talking about criticisms of a particular company when it's the one being discussed. Should Theranos be criticized for their own failings? Yes. Should every U.S. startup be suspected of being similar be…

I wouldn't mind it if someone pressed me about those companies, Uber can absolutely be managed on the local government level, and the other bad stuff that these big companies do is within the range of activism. It's not 100% my responsibility, but there's probably at least a 1 a few zeroes after the decimal. Secondly, when one company gets away with something in the US, we have a fairly good reason to believe that ot…

Thing is, the Chinese companies who do shady things absolutely get punished. Not just slap-on-the-wrist fines, but jail time and sometimes death penalty. Legal precedent is not why legit founders get harassed for being Chinese.

We're not talking about well-thought-out questions about legal precedence, but random trolls calling their products 'cheap Chinese knock-offs' even when they are original, and even in cases where it's a similar version to something, if it's made in the U.S.A., we call that "private label" or "white label." Or "generics."

Re: Biotech booms in China

#26

Post by CandidlyFake »

joe_the_user wrote: post #20
CandidlyFake wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, it seems logical that biotech would boom in a country with less regulation than the US. If that was the case, biotech would be booming from the congo to nepal. Biotech is booming in china because they have the resources ( money, people and infrastructure ).

Come on, any comment like mine above has an implicit "all else being equal" in it. I didn't say that to describe some absolute formula but to contextualize my later remarks.

And my point is that you are just offering simplification that has no merit. It's a cheap ploy I expect from silly journalists, not on HN. Regulation isn't why there is a biotech boom. As I stated, it's money, people and infrastructure.

Re: Biotech booms in China

#27

Post by seanmcdirmid »

qiqing wrote: post #18
justinjlynn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, some founders will then see any valid criticism of their methods and/or business practices and frame it as China-bashing. It's bad for everyone, including investors and the world at large, and I really wish the racist nonsense would stop.

One of the privileges of being a U.S.-based founder is internationally, no one asks you to answer for the actions of Uber, Exxon, or pharma bro as though all companies in the U.S. came from one homogenous mass. I'm not talking about criticisms of a particular company when it's the one being discussed. Should Theranos be criticized for their own failings? Yes. Should every U.S. startup be suspected of being similar be…

I agree. I mean, we shouldn't treat all Chinese startups suspect because of shady practices by Baidu and the PLA. Though that the PLA was involved in that medical scam a few years back does make the whole government as suspect. Baidu also didn't get much punishment, they pretty much got away with it.

Re: Biotech booms in China

#28

Post by tanilama »

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #3

This does not seem good. The world has never really reconciled the biological and chemical atrocities that went on in Asia during WWII and since, like they have in Europe. The Japanese used chemical gas attacks (munitions of unexploded gas are still found in China today) and did live vivesections on prisoners, amputating their appendages until there was nothing left. Hitler’s SS thought the atrocities so bad in China…

I feel you are reading too much infowars. If anything, China is using biotech to save and extend lifes not terminating them. Why would you assume something like that by default?

Re: Biotech booms in China

#29

Post by narrator »

qiqing wrote: post #14
narrator wrote: post #8

A couple of years back there was a paralyzed guy who went to China and got stem cell injections and was able to walk again. He did an AMA on reddit and the whole thing was full of people gaslighting him that he wasn't really paralyzed, or it wasn't really permanent, or he wasn't really healed, etc. Then we did it in the U.S a couple years later and claimed we're the first. Gibson's observation that "The future is alr…

Do you have the link by any chance? This doesn't surprise me at all since there's a vicious cycle of China-bashing-gets-eyeballs leads to random-trolls-enjoy-China-bashing. Some of the worst trolls just love harassing founders (esp. female founders) with 10-things-I-hate-about-China to derail conversations about their startup or their product or their journey to product-market-fit.

Here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/k1hts/i_am_a_28yr_old...

Re: Biotech booms in China

#30

Post by fiblye »

devy wrote: post #12
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #3

This does not seem good. The world has never really reconciled the biological and chemical atrocities that went on in Asia during WWII and since, like they have in Europe. The Japanese used chemical gas attacks (munitions of unexploded gas are still found in China today) and did live vivesections on prisoners, amputating their appendages until there was nothing left. Hitler’s SS thought the atrocities so bad in China…

> The world has never really reconciled the biological and chemical atrocities that went on in Asia during WWII and since, like they have in Europe. Correct, it hasn't reconciled because Japanese government never truly feel guilty for their war crimes and most of Japanese prime minister still goes to visit Yasukuni Shrine for war criminals (do you know of any shrine for Hitler that German prime ministers visit?) And…

>Correct, it hasn't reconciled because Japanese government never truly feel guilty for their war crimes and most of Japanese prime minister still goes to visit Yasukuni Shrine for war criminals

Ever consider that the reason Japan is defensive is because their opponents spread outright lies like this?

Japan has apologized numerous times. Japan and Korea negotiated a deal to pay reparations in 2015, Japan paid, and it was settled and said to be finished by both countries. Then Korea had a massive scandal involving their president, a new president stepped in, and that new president said that the final deal of the previous government doesn't count anymore and so Japan hasn't actually apologized.

Furthermore, Yasukuni isn't a shrine for war criminals. I go every year and I know that that's pure, absolute, undiluted bullshit propaganda spread by people looking to gain something. It's a fairly normal shinto shrine and its purpose is to enshrine everyone who died for Japan during wartime. Whether they're good or not is irrelevant. Saying Yasukuni is for war criminals is just like saying the Bible is all about endorsing slavery and murder because several people in the book committed those acts. When someone says that, it's pretty clear that they're not looking to open a friendly discussion.

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