In the absence of pain, it is easier to do nothing, and just let things evolve.

This is human, we do not invest ‘just in case’, we invest to reduce pain, or more carefully, to leverage an opportunity. This is why big companies & bureaucracies are slow at reacting, the individuals who can lead change, those at the top feel little pain, in fact, accepting risk is dangerous, and invites pain into the room, so risk is avoided.

Look at any major event in history, the pain associated with it leads to change. Any war, epidemic, coup, they all lead to change. Often the change may have happened over a long time frame in the absence of the pain, but in its presence, the time is suddenly compressed.

Just look at the speed that mRNA vaccines have rolled out of labs and into peoples arms over the last 18 months.

The science of mRNA has been evolving slowly for decades. The first suggestion that RNA molecules that drive the synthesis of proteins, move around in a cell was made in the early fifties, and messenger RNA (mRNA) was discovered in 1961.

The first successful trials with mice of an mRNA vaccine were done in the early 90’s. However, the idea was not the target of significant investment, as it seemed alternative approaches were more promising. Over the last decade as the development of CRISPR technology made mRNA techniques potentially more stable, there was renewed scientific interest.

By early 2018 there was a body of scientific exploration that indicated that there was a significant opportunity for mRNA vaccines to be successfully deployed against a range of viruses.

Then along came Covid.

The rate of development accelerated dramatically because of the rapid and huge investment of both public and private money. By mid-2020 both Pfizer established in 1849, and Moderna established in 2010, were conducting human trials of a synthetic version of the messenger molecule that moves RNA from the nucleus of a cell to the outer casing of that cell, delivering protection from the virus.

Since then, there has been the biggest human trial in history going on, with millions of participants from whom data is being collected, enabling the rapid refinement of these vaccines.

This is exactly the process that has happened many times over history. A crisis of some sort compresses geometrically the time that would normally be associated with a significant change. However, the seeming rapid deployment of pain relievers usually happens after a long gestation of the basic science that delivers the antidote. mRNA did not happen overnight, the development from an idea to a testable molecule took decades before the vaccine could be developed and commercialised.

Pain causes rapid change as we seek aggressively to relieve it, disregarding the usual barriers, and accelerating the deployment of the science in products that relive the pain that are improved in real time.

As an aside, I would have thought the fires and floods of early 2020 in eastern Australia would have been sufficient pain for the message of climate change to penetrate the  collective brains of our political ‘leaders’, but it seems not. The final catalyst to action on this front will have to be really nasty indeed!

Header sketch. Francis Crik. The header is an informal 1956 sketch of the role Francis Crick imagined was played by RNA in the transfer of information in a cell. The presence of what became known as ‘messenger RNA’ was confirmed several years later.

Note: my understanding of the development process of mRNA is rudimentary at best, I am a marketer not a scientist or biologist.