Google, The Gingham Dog and The Calico Cat

Big money follows big data follows big disruption.

Questions, Google, I got questions about Calico, the new division dedicated to anti-aging and headed by Art Levinson, Chairman at both Genentech and Apple.

How will Calico interface with 23andme? with Apple? is the iWatch involved? What biotech is this all about? Mainly genetics? Telomeres?  Is this Ray Kurzweil’s project?  Larry Page mentioned 20 years to get answers.  There are answers now and soon to be answers SOON. Get that information out and work on the long range plan (glad you are) but thinking in time frames like that makes you look and act old. (e.g. Low dose naltrexone – wow – that rejuvenated my body – it normalizes the immune system at 4.5 mg and under. See videos about curing cancer  from presentations at USC Med. I love the pancreatic cancer patients cured because my mother died of this.  Maybe if Google didn’t put WebMd and Mayo Clinic up front of every med search Steve Jobs might have found LDN – low dose naltrexone. )

I haven’t finished my posts on personalized medicine and Silicon Valley when this comes out. Exogen Biotechnology was my first example and then I heard an app mamma pitching hers to a VC. Her app will eliminate the gatekeepers from a patient wanting to report info to the doctor. In that sense, there is disruption (watch this word – it is THE WORD to say, “I am in, I understand what new tech is all about as”) But everything else about her app was Obamacare at its usual. “A woman NEEDS her doctor.” Like a fish needs her bicycle?

Let me explain. A woman, (a man) needs information to make decisions. We need data points. We need to know how to make sense of them. And THEN, we might, or might not, need a member of the medical industry.

23ndme gives us our genetic info. Geneticgenie.org  gives us more using 23andme raw data.

What will Calico do, if anything along those lines?

Apple CEO Tim Cook said this about Calico: “For too many of our friends and family, life has been cut short or the quality of their life is too often lacking. Art is one of the crazy ones who thinks it doesn’t have to be this way. There is no one better suited to lead this mission and I am excited to see the results.”

n.b. to Tim Cook: Art is not crazy. He’s right. The current medical system DOES NOT WORK. Of course, Genentech and its parent, Roche are and have been part of the problem.  Now that everyone has made their millions/billions on the backs of dumb and dumber drugs,  are they saying, “Me? Take that crap when I have heart disease, diabetes, etc? No thanks. We know there is better to be had and now is the time to prove it, make it happen, and monetize it.”

Are you going to be dealing with DNA breaks like Exogen Biotechnology?  How about telomerase activators like TA65?

A moment of silence for the pioneers who brought us to this point. Not content to believe a medical curriculum written by a pharmaceutical company or take a heart drug that destroys necessary enzymes – these people have often been shamed into silence while going about their work.  I AM a medical curmudgeon and not afraid to be so. I am also the daughter of an M.D., FACP, writer of articles for NEJM and more, former chief of staff of an Ivy related hospital and so much more. He gave me access to his library from the day I could read.

It lead me to the basement of Stanford Medical Library many years ago when I walked out of a doctor’s office, ignoring his dire prognosis, and collected my data points on my own.  I know there is a better way. I found it and here’s to Calico and finding and doing whatever it is. I know it is mainstream because you are mainstream disruptors now. Big money follows big data follows big disruption.