From Beaubier to Boston, or more correctly Cambridge, a little spot just outside Boston home for a neat little post secondary institution called Harvard. You may have heard of it.
Morris Johnson, a Beaubier area farmer and self-described citizen scientist, has been invited to make a presentation at the Humanity+ Summit which is slated for the Harvard campus June 12 and 13.
The seminar itself will be staged in the Harvard Science Center which can hold up to 600 delegates. Last year's summit in Irvine, Texas saw a total of 409,000 viewers checking in on the conference website Techzulu. This was on top of the delegates who were registered on-site.
"There is more hype over this year's conference, so who knows how many could end up on-line this time?" said Johnson.
"I don't have any doctorate degrees, and I haven't run any large companies," said Johnson with a laugh, noting that he and his children are primary shareholders in Lifespan Pharma Inc. a business dedicated to helping people extend a lifespan in a healthy, natural manner through better management techniques.
Through deployment of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP), values are given to foods and pharma by ensuring a safe high quality finished product.
Johnson said work in this area was first started by the Pillsbury company for NASA in the early 1980s.
Johnson will be joining a host of other speakers, many who do have doctorates, who will be addressing related topics. They include Itamar Arel from the University of Tennessee who will speak about artificial general intelligence revolutions; Heather Knight who is an expert on robotics and sensor design; Ed Boyden from MIT media laboratories who will speak about how brain circuits are controlled by light and Dr. Aubrey deGrey, a biomedical gerontologist from the United Kingdom who will speak about ways to combat an aging process and his research in rejuvenation.
Johnson said his inquiry about the results of the Texas summit and interest in the upcoming conference led to an invitation and then he realized that "this was going to be some serious stuff ." That meant he had to do some homework on his presentation since all presenters will be vetted prior to the start of the conference. Johnson put the final touches to his power point presentation on May 12 and 13, ready for scrutiny by the summit organizers.
Johnson said his fellow shareholders in the Lifespan business include Silas Kanning of Plentywood, Montana; Dr. Terry Grossman from Denver, Colorado; Steve Burnside from Minot and Rod Fisher from Dauphin, Manitoba.
"I got them interested in this venture some as far back as 2005. It started with hemp marketing for animals, then we realized that if the business was going to be viable we had to get serious in terms of volume so we turned to the human side and extracting for pharmaceutical products, being compliant with all regulations of course. We've been shipping our products now since 2006," said Johnson.
Acknowledging the stigma associated with cannabis, Johnson said that this particular hurdle is slowly being overcome. Using the trademark Canterpene, Johnson said Lifespan's product "is positively not marijuana. What has been developed is something very different, using hemp oil and other products. But yes, it drives me crazy sometimes trying to market the positive aspect of it because of this stigma attached to cannabis. We're not talking pot here, we're talking about diverse chemistry. But ancestry says pot, but if it weren't, it would be in everybody's cupboard," he said.
Johnson said that during his presentation he will be talking about Lifespan, but also addressing the concept of developing health records that can be managed so that the data can be mined and standardized to help sell health programs.
"It's about managing your own health program," said Johnson.
The citizen scientist pointed out that people/patients have become much more knowledgeable about health issues to the point now where many can become good managers of a health plan. But in order to make it work, "regulators need to be less overbearing; the insurance industry and politicial world also has to buy into it," he said.
"Let's face it, with the insurance industry, people have to die to make it work. If you add one year to the average lifespan, then it has implications for them. Then you enter into the discussions of moral hazards and why we stand aside for insurers. Then you'll encounter political interference because of the profits gained from health sciences. So in order to make this work, they have to buy into it because it's all part of the industry."
Johnson said the field of genetic engineering is a fascinating one and therefore he will be an avid listener as well as being an active participant in this year's Humanity+ Summit.
