Stuart K. Hayashi
The following is a section of the longer essay, “How Billionaires and Capitalism Save Billions of Lives — Including Yours.” That essay includes an index listing various case studies of a for-profit initiative saving lives. The blog post below is of at least one such case study. You can return to that index here.
Something else which saves lives, but which is given much less credit for doing so today, is plastic. For the past several years, we have heard much about its products polluting the ocean and remaining a threat to animals for the very reason it has been a boon to humankind — that it is so durable. Sometimes it seems as though people have come to think of plastic as being an inherently bad material.
The reality is that the substance itself should not be blamed. There are technological remedies. Scientists have discovered microorganisms and arthropods that eat plastic. Theoretically, these organisms can be let loose upon plastics in landfills before the materials reach the ocean. More pertinent is that the properties of plastics — that they manage to be both lightweight and durable — has made them ideal for various medical devices. They provide the material for bags in which donated blood is stored.
ScienceHeroes.Com
credits blood transfusions with saving 1.1 billion lives. The plastics in which the blood was stored definitely facilitated a larger number of those procedures. There would have been far fewer of them had it not been for modern storage techniques.
A
National Geographic piece that is fashionably unflattering toward plastics nonetheless quotes University of Massachusetts Lowell engineer Bridgette Budhlall: “Plastics for biomedical applications have many desirable properties, including low cost, ease of processing, and [ability] to be sterilized easily.” The
National Geographic piece then continues that Dr. Budhlall also mentions that plastics can be changed with coatings that make them especially resistant to contagion by microscopic organisms. On account of how they have allowed for medical professionals to maintain hygiene,
NatGeo admits that “plastic has revolutionized the medical industry over the past century...”
The first plastics were invented by Belgian-born chemical engineer Leo Henrik Baekeland. Having
been paid $1 million by George Eastman for his special photographic paper, he could have been content with early retirement. Indeed, his contract with Eastman Kodak contained a non-compete clause. It stipulated that Baekeland could not commercialize any new photographic papers for the next ten years. Therefore, he took to satisfying his curiosity in other matters of chemical engineering. There were still millions of practical problems to be solved.
Plugging his newfound riches into his second major scientific enterprise, he invented Bakelite, an early plastic that would serve as a model for the others to be created throughout the twentieth century. This made Baekeland richer still. At age seventy-five, he sold his plastics company to Union Carbide for $16.5 million.
As with other entrepreneurs profiled in this essay, Baekeland was an eccentric. While having a conversation on a hot day, he would
make a habit of walking straight into his swimming pool or the ocean fully clothed as he continued speaking. He did this nonchalantly as if there was nothing unusual about it.
Return to index of case studies of lifesaving for-profit ventures.
