Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
Fri Apr 29, 2022, 11:27 PM Apr 2022

The Health of Shanghai, Scientific Instrumentation, and Humans.

My company is supporting research into three different approaches to the treatment of Alzheimer's disease in support of three different companies.

I cannot relate the nature of these approaches, as they represent IP, but a key instrument for one of them, one of two such instruments in our laboratory, has gone down. Our "back up" instrument is already running at full capacity.

To repair the instrument, the company servicing it requires a part that is a semiconductor device. These types of devices used to be made in the US, but the company that supplies the instrument, founded in the "Silicon Valley," and once a titan of American Industry, has outsourced manufacture of this device to China.

Shanghai is under a Covid lockdown, a rather draconian one from what I understand. Thus this device is unavailable. Workers who run the plant are confined to their homes. This widely used scientific instrument is apparently, from my conversation with the company, is down all over the United States.

The particular mechanism for Alzheimer's treatment on which we are working may or may not work. After decades in the industry, although it has been my privilege to help in various ways to bring life saving medications to patients, I'm somewhat jaded when it comes to believing that everything I see is as near to earth shattering as the people working through it might believe; Alzheimer's is a tough nut to crack, and we are only now at the edge of developing reproducible biomarkers for it. Having a biomarker is an indicator that we actually know what the disease is. It appears from some work I've read that it may not be a single disease; like the generic term for the disease "cancer," Alzheimer's may represent a variety diseases under one general heading. Hence the multiple approaches to addressing it.

Yet all scientific teams believe in their work; as well they should. It may be the project that is delayed because we cannot get a part from the closed city of Shanghai might actually represent a real therapy.

I suppose the semiconductor industry moved to China for reasons of cost and - because the semi-conductor industry is anything but "green" no matter how much bullshit is handed out by the solar industry - lax environmental regulations.

The cost however goes beyond money. It goes to human lives. We do ourselves no favor as a culture when we see everything in terms of the "bottom line," because the "bottom line" sometimes leads to the bottom.

7 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
 

Hoyt

(54,770 posts)
1. First off, thank you for the research you do. While we definitely need
Fri Apr 29, 2022, 11:46 PM
Apr 2022

to ensure supplies of medical equipment, etc., cost is also a factor. If I can buy one of your instruments, a chemical analyzer, computer analytic systems, etc., for roughly the same price as one instrument made here, more people get helped.

Concentration in one place is a huge risk.

We’ve likely gone too far in global trade, but it’s gonna take decades to change things. And, we’ll be in perpetual war if we don’t spread the wealth around to other countries.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
2. While I credit what you say to some extent, it appears that "concentration in one place" is...
Sat Apr 30, 2022, 12:03 AM
Apr 2022

...exactly what happened.

As it happens, the bourgeois world has simply exported the risks of manufacture to poor people. That is not spreading wealth; rather it's exploitation.

I follow things in the literature like the concentration of brominated flame retardants in the bloodstreams of Chinese children "recycling" our stuff so we can declare ourselves "green."

Now that China is wealthy, having loaded some of its citizens with heavy metals and haloaromatics, they've closed China to the import of electronic waste.

Watch out Africa!

There is a lot of tragedy behind the things about which we are glib.

The semiconductor industry was not pretty when it was in California; even though in the 1970's and 1980's it was heralded as "green" there. Nevertheless at that time, even the worst government in the US was not certifiably insane; we had environmental regulations. Some of them were a little weird, to be honest. I have direct experience with a law that required me to not neutralize a dangerous material in a manner easily performed, but rather to ship it around at great expense and at risk to lots of people. This was obviously a stupid rule. This said, regulation can be wise; often it is. I think regulation is necessary to protect our common space.

Sending manufacturing off to places where poverty precludes attention to regulation is not ethical in my view.

It is definitely true that living standards in China have risen, as well they should have done, but I disagree that everything should have been sent there.

 

Hoyt

(54,770 posts)
3. OK, let's tell that peasant in Vietnam whose life has been improved that
Sat Apr 30, 2022, 12:32 AM
Apr 2022

we don’t give a damn about them.

We have to find a balance that is fair to workers here. But, wait until all those folks have to pay 3 times what they were paying for “flat panels” a year ago.

We live in a big world, America First is over, gonna be hard telling the rest of the world to f%*k off, and worse.

Hope you get your parts and carry on your research. I may well need it.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
4. I didn't say that at all.
Sat Apr 30, 2022, 12:52 AM
Apr 2022

I think I argued that I do care. I just don't want the people you call "peasants" to have babies loaded with lead. This happens.

I'm acutely aware of it, because I do read the fucking environmental literature, to which I have excellent access, regularly.

Here's an exercise for you if you're concerned about "peasants:" Go to Google Scholar and type in the following list of words: brominated flame retardants chinese children plasma.

In a few seconds, one can get 3,780 hits.

I do these kind of exercises all the time. Why? Because I give a shit about people digging through mud in the Congo region for no pay so we can have cobalt for our electric cars.

We should pay more for our stuff. The fact that we are unwilling to pay more for our stuff is one reason we are so willing to throw it away and get new stuff. Every generation in every country after us will have to pay for our profligacy.

The idea that Americans should not to be required to pay three times more for a flat screen TV set smacks to me a little more of "America First" fascism than you seem to think it does.

I came from a time when people repaired their television sets when they broke. Now they just hall them off on "recycling day" and buy new ones. That is a function of cost.

In my opinion you're being more than a little smug and might relieve yourself of it by being a little better informed and a little less judgmental.

 

Hoyt

(54,770 posts)
5. Sorry, I want you to get your part. Don't want to use that for reducing
Sat Apr 30, 2022, 01:04 AM
Apr 2022

trade with others outside our border to enrich ourselves.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
7. It's an RF generator on a mass spec.
Mon May 2, 2022, 08:35 AM
May 2022

Apparently attempts to buy this RF generator from other sources has evolved into something of a scam.

That's what we're being told anyway.

One of the responsibilities of my position is to screen instrument purchases, in particular mass specs. I'm not happy, and will weigh this in future purchases. Mass specs are expensive instruments and having even one down over a long period is itself expensive, the risk to projects not even included.

Latest Discussions»Culture Forums»Science»The Health of Shanghai, S...