What is your ticket out of Poverty? Is it Education? Yet Education is not cheap and that’s a problem for society; that’s according to Professor Andre Isaacs whom I interviewed for the podcast episode today. It was quite powerful as usual. In retrospect, sometime ago I wrote an article in the Jamaica Gleaner saying “Science & Technology” are keys to Jamaica’s competitiveness in the global world and so, this interview In https://anchor.fm/theneoliberal a former Jamaican, Dr. André Korrie chemist/professor of Holy cross University was quite necessary and important to the discussions there. In fact, he indicated that he was not as as involved in Jamaica but would like to share his work and help them anyways he can. That’s something we will work on. He explored his work which started at U-Penn having to do with developing compounds that addressed certain types of cancers as a way to proliferate so as to disrupt a pathway. He then went on to UCLA Berkeley to work on synthesis that no one had worked on before. He is currently leading his students at Holy Cross to develop methods for making heterocycles or new structures. He revealed that this is important as over 80 percent of pharmacies and drugs that we use have these structures embedded in them. He stated emphatically that he and his students do not make drugs, just ways to make them better. Note: side effects come from structures and his work involves ways to develop structures to minimize these side effects. We discuss ways to make more global south and Caribbean or black and brown people more interested in science. He stated that people are choosing careers that can help them climb out of poverty and they don’t think about pure science - Chemistry, Physics and Biology; maybe medicine or Business but that’s it. He also alluded to the point that our education system and that the funding is not available for science in this regard. He stated that India and China have invested in their peoples so that they’re in STEM fields. But for Black people in Jamaica and the US, there are disparities and lack of interest. Example: Facial recognition are not properly black peoples due to this disparity. I asked “what’s happening in the industry and how can we become more effective in responding to new diseases and viruses?” He stated that science is powerful and that after COVID was identified, they sequences the genes and within a few months was able to develop a vaccine. This was due to MRNA technology. Nevertheless he confessed that science literacy is lacking and absent from curricula and that people don’t understand complex concepts which created the suspicions in science and the Breakthroughs; people just couldn’t understand why it took so quickly to develop a vaccine when they do not understand that science is at its pinnacle in terms of how we quickly Scientists can develop drugs to dealings with new diseases and viruses. Further, he stated that science communication is what is needed to help with breaking down these misunderstandings and of course we are the Neoliberal are always talking about the aim of communication is to make popular what was the monopoly. We delve into these and much more on the show. Thank you for your support and continue to send us feedbacks and share this show with your friends and fans and donate to Us at https://anchor.fm/theneoliberal/support so that we can continue to make this show free for all. The show is available on all major podcast streams including Spotify, Anchor, Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Podvine, Radio Public, Google Podcast, Stitcher, the Alexa, renaldocmckenzie.com and theneoliberal.com. The creator, producer and host is Renaldo C. McKenzie, Author of Neoliberalism, Globalization Income Inequality Poverty And Resistance; Doctoral candidate at Georgetown University, graduate of University of Pennsylvania & President of The Neoliberal Corporation, a grassroots think tank, News Commentary, research, publishing & web services company.