How AstraZeneca’s Blunder Helped Save the World
Error and Innovation in the Time of the Pandemic
Recently, I finished reading the book “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation” by Steven Johnson, which goes in depth on the patterns that come with new ideas and innovations. Steven Johnson is an American author whose books are primarily informational and based around the sciences and technology. “Where Good Ideas Come From” is no exception to those ideas.
A couple ideas that stood out to me personally came from the chapters “Error” and “Exaptation.” The main idea of “Error” is that the best ideas came from many mistakes. It’s inspiring in its message to keep going until something works and it made me really think on how often we start all over when we make a mistake instead of working off of what we got that’s good.
“Exaptation” covers the idea of taking bits and pieces of already existing ideas/concepts and applying them to make something new. It could also be interpreted as taking inspiration from something. I feel this applies to me because, in my spare time, I make digital art and a big part of growing as an artist involves gaining inspiration from other artists and experimenting to see what works best.
Vaccine
Now as the current pandemic (hopefully) comes to an end, I realized that along with the amount of innovations that had to cease development during this time, a lot of new ideas were put into motion, as well. The biggest one, to me, is the creation of the Coronavirus vaccines.
The ideas mentioned previously from the two chapters of “Where Good Ideas Come From” can definitely be seen from creation of the vaccines.
Error
A possibly lesser known story involving trying and trying again with Coronavirus vaccines would be the cases surrounding the AstraZeneca shots. Though the numbers were small, reports of blood clots after receiving the AstraZeneca shots, and even one death, were made from Denmark.
The numbers, still relatively small, then grew across Europe and even some cases involved cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, a rare and hard to treat illness. Thankfully, the use of the vaccine is being halted until any link is found, as this is something that cannot be overlooked.
There was, without a doubt, a slew of errors made before coming down to the final product, which is still in the early stages even now. And with how new the virus is, the scientists behind the vaccines’ development really must have had to go through numerous trial-and-errors before any good results came up.
The vaccine itself — or rather the ones that use mRNA — help in creating harmless versions of the proteins on the Coronavirus cell. From there, antibodies can be made. The mRNA “exapted” the protein from the virus cell.
There is also talk of CRISPR, a gene editing technology developed in part by Jennifer Doudna which uses both DNA and a kind of RNA molecule as main tools for gene editing. CRISPR’s main purpose at the moment is for treating mostly genetic illnesses. However, it is theorized that one day with this technology, characteristics like eye color, height or muscle mass can be changed.
The amount of experimenting and failures it would take to get to that point would be astronomical, I would imagine. If you want to find details on CRISPR, gene editing, and even the current Coronavirus vaccine all in one place, listen to this podcast with Walter Isaacson, an author who recently wrote a biography on Doudna and her work on CRISPR titled, “ The Code Breaker”.
Only two of the ideas from the chapters were really discussed here. There are many more in “Where Good Ideas Come From” that could’ve been applied to the creation of the Coronavirus vaccine and even the pandemic itself, like the concept of letting ideas flow freely and the best ideas taking time to curate, to name a couple. With that, we can hopefully use these concepts to help us to innovate, especially in times of need.
