Oh Silicon Valley, how you have lost your way.
All this self-aggrandizing drivel, combined with cultish zealotry, is abhorrent, if not downright dangerous.
Self-labeled libertarians lobbying to carve out their own tax code exemptions, instead of overhaul. Free market advocates with mandatory, years-long nondisclosure agreements.
Even a billionaire bankrolling a wrestler’s lawsuit regarding a leaked sex tape, genuinely believing his vendetta is philanthropic.
However, I have to give credit where it is due.
A host of deadly, and woefully common, infections are going to be prevented in the near future, and a big part of it comes from one of Silicon Valley’s most exclusive ivory towers.
Combined with one of the biggest biotech breakthroughs in generations, billions of people are going to be living without the constant risk of sickness and death.
And this isn’t that nebulous future that never materializes, regardless of how many private funding rounds inject billions into a company with no revenue.
It is happening right now.
AIME and the Singularity University
If you haven’t heard of the Singularity University, I’m not surprised.
Founded in 2009, and based on Ray Kurzweil’s version of the singularity theory, this Silicon Valley think tank blurs education, start-up incubation, and starry-eyed speculation about how computing breakthroughs, nanotechnology, and biotechnology will converge to propel human intelligence and society into something unrecognizably advanced.
One of the companies to emerge from it is AIME, Artificial Intelligence in Medical Epidemiology. The work it is doing is nothing short of revolutionary.
Using an advanced algorithm and 11 variables, including weather, construction data, and death statistics, the company can predict dengue outbreaks with unprecedented accuracy.
As of now, it boasts that it can anticipate the outbreaks with 87% accuracy.
The company then takes the data and superimposes it over maps for health officials and NGOs. It even includes a 400-meter buffer zone, which is about as far as a mosquito — the most common form of transmission — can fly.
As an outbreak spreads, the map can be updated in real-time as well, creating an invaluable tool for targeted countermeasures.
Since January, AIME has been working with Viva Rio and the government of San Paulo on a pilot program focused on preventing the spread of Zika and dengue virus in Brazil — just in time for the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
The Next Step
Of course, this data can only go so far. Health officials can use it to slow or contain a spreading outbreak, but they cannot truly prevent the disease.
At best, it can provide the means to play a life-or-death type of whack-a-mole.
The next step will be to take this targeting data and couple it with a vaccine, which doesn’t exist.
Most vaccines are designed using weakened, specifically bred strands of existing diseases, introducing a slew of problems.
The particularly vulnerable — the old, the young, people with weak immune systems or taking immunosuppressant drugs — often cannot be vaccinated due to a heightened risk of a full-blown infection.
Storage is also a problem, with limited shelf-lives and refrigeration requirements that make effective vaccination impossible in far-flung locales.
The difficulty with creating a dengue vaccine, coupled with these major hurdles, has created an insurmountable problem to date.
However, a vaccine may never even be needed, at least not in the traditional sense.
Reinventing Prevention
Right now, a small company is on the verge of releasing a groundbreaking device.
It will be used to inoculate everyone in or near a dengue outbreak area, with no side-effects or accidental infection.
It can, and will, be used to eliminate the Zika epidemic, future Ebola outbreaks, MERS, yellow fever, and antibiotic-resistant infections.
Plus, it will even address deadly cancers and other conditions.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute call it “a major breakthrough.”
CNBC writes that because of this development, “Cancers could be cured or prevented with a single, risk-free shot.”
Clinical trials are underway at Johns Hopkins, Upenn, and Duke.
The NIH has thrown $41 million at it. DARPA added $73 million. The Army, $500 million.
Then there is the private sector. Merck cut a deal for access to it. Roche inked a $422 million deal, while AstraZeneca is paying $1 billion.
Predicting outbreaks with big data, and rapidly deploying this technology has the potential to save 2.5 billion people from the risk of dengue alone.
Ultimately, it could redefine, and replace, the $57 billion vaccine industry, while taking over large swaths of the money pouring into treatments for cancer, HIV, malaria, influenza, HPV, Hep C, and the list goes on and on.
And this one tiny company is at the heart of the revolution.
