I met Guido Núñez-Mujica during my last trip to Venezuela in December. When I read his excellent essay on Hugo Chavez’s prohibition of video games published by Boing Boing in November I felt immediately compelled to contact him.
A couple of tweets and a few weeks later, we were having lunch in Caracas. Our face-to-face conversation confirmed my initial gut-feeling about Guido’s character: he is a brave Venezuelan revolutionary — although the revolution he advocates is of a radically different nature than the travesti that Hugo Chavez’s petro-populist Bolivarian Revolution has turned into.
A computational biologist from Universidad de Los Andes (one of Venezuela’s universities whose students have suffered the most from repressive attacks by Chavez’s government security forces) who calls himself a “nonconformist, forward-looking geek,” Guido has a terrific idea that can make an important, tangible contribution to improving the lives of the poorest people on earth. His company is developing LavaAmp:
…a portable, rugged, inexpensive thermal cycler that can perform reliable DNA tests for infectious diseases in low resource environments. LavaAmp is not a diagnostic method for one specific disease, but a hardware platform that can be used to test for many different conditions. We envision LavaAmp as part of a new, evidence-based public health approach to managing both new pandemics and neglected diseases. Local governments and international agencies need cheap, accurate, reliable information about the spread and incidence of disease to plan and deploy an effective response. At less than one-tenth the price of current devices, LavaAmp would open the door to widespread testing for diseases, giving the world’s poorest people access to the kind of preventative medicine most people in rich countries take for granted. LavaAmp could also revolutionize education in tools in molecular biology for developing countries, educating the bioinnovators of the future.
Millions of people in the Global South suffer from neglected diseases, many of which could be treated, even cured, if they were detected early enough. But reliable, low cost diagnosis hasn’t been available, as drug companies have no incentive to invest in the diseases of the poor. New pandemics can go undetected until they have spread out of control, like HIV, and treatable ailments can cripple impoverished communities because it is too expensive to detect them early enough to do something.
You would think that social entrepreneurship initiatives like Guido’s would be embraced by a government that boasts putting the poor at the top of its priorities. But Guido decided to pursue his project abroad mainly because of the red tape and corruption he saw on other projects. He was simply not willing to deal with petty bureaucrats that while paying lip service to socialism and helping the poor, block solutions to health care problems asking for kickbacks in the range of the tens of thousands of US dollars just to give the necessary permits. Bureaucrats working for a government that lambasts global capitalism, but instead of supporting creative small entrepreneurs whose products could be manufactured locally, favor imported, expensive equipment for hospitals whose providers have the depth of pocket to pay for juicy bribes. Now, even if the LavaAmp will be manufactured abroad it still will be useful for research and healthcare in Venezuela and other countries.
So while the “revolutionary” that rules our country travels on his never-ending demagoguery world-tour, Guido rolls up his sleeves and puts up the real hard work that real revolutionaries have a talent for. On a shoestring budget, he has managed to build a working prototype for LavaAmp, travels regularly to Silicon Valley and other technology hubs to talk to potential investors, and visits other Latin American countries to research their markets and meet up with potential customers.
LavaAmp is one of 34 finalists chosen in a competitive contest to attend the Unreasonable Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where they will receive crucial training, mentorship, and access to capital they need to take flight. If you wish to become a sponsor, please submit the funds here, where you will also be able to learn more about the Unreasonable Institute and Guido’s awesome project. He is only 5% short of the funding goal to win the contest, so every penny is wholeheartedly appreciated!
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