The Golden Age of Biomedical Research

In 1492, Columbus set sail on a voyage to reach the riches of the East and instead found a new world. His was not an isolated act of discovery but part of the Golden Age of Exploration —a multinational effort to find new lands, new wealth, and new trade routes. Prince Henry the Navigator, Magellan, Cabot, Bering, and many others from the major European powers used large government subsidies to explore and lay claim to the Americas and large parts of Africa and Asia. The end of the 15 century saw the blossoming of exploration because of dramatic improvements in the technology of sea travel. Devices for navigation such as the sea-quadrant, improvements in cartography, and especially great improvements in ship design so that fully rigged sailing ships supplanted slave-rowed galleys or single-sail vessels, all combined to make practical the long voyages needed for exploration. These technological innovations and improvements justified the high priority that many nations gave to an exuberant and, for the times, enormously expensive effort. The result was Western civilization as we know it. At the end of the 20 century, we are in the midst of another golden age. Abundant historical examples convincingly demonstrate the effect of developments in technology on the progress of science and society, but few are as impressive as today’s growth in the biomedical sciences. The advent of molecular biological technology and advances in computing, robotics, organic chemistry, imaging, microscopy, crystallography, and many other sciences and technologies have allowed biomedical scientists to answer questions that were previously completely unapproachable. My personal experiences are typical of my generation. As a junior faculty member teaching immunology, I presented the clonal selection of antibodyforming cells as a widely accepted theory, but I had to indicate that there were several quite different views of how the immune system might have sufficient genetic flexibility in order to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of different antibody molecules that we can make. Just a few years later, the genetic information for the immunoglobulin genes had been sequenced and the complex organization of the immune response at the level of the genome was exposed. The passionate debate between the somatic mutation theorists and the germ line theorists was closed forever, and in the process, a new science had been born. My personal experience was replicated in all areas of biomedical science as the new techniques solved the old problems and opened entirely new and unanticipated opportunities. The capacity to ask and answer ‘impossible’ questions has arrived in biomedical science, as we now see the elucidation of how many phenotypes, including the behavioral phenotypes, derive their expression. We should recognize this as the Golden Age of Biology. The best time in all of history to be a biomedical scientist is right now. It is not at all surprising that the rapid progress of bioscience has been accompanied by an increase in the number of biologists and that growth is reflected in a dramatic growth of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). As detailed in this issue by Garrison and colleagues, membership in FASEB societies has doubled in this decade. Much of this growth is attributable to the growth in the number of societies within the Federation, but the number of biomedical scientists as a whole is clearly increasing as well. More important than sheer numbers, the data collected by Garrison et al. indicate that FASEB scientists receive a majority of all investigator-initiated NIH grants. Thus, this organization and this journal represent those who are doing the peer-reviewed, publicly sponsored biomedical research in the United States. Given this, we have a responsibility to address and support their interests. And what are the interests of biomedical scientists? Obviously, learning from others is foremost, and The FASEB Journal is one important means for scientists to learn what is happening in laboratories elsewhere. But scientists also need to explain to the public what it is that scientists do and why it is important. It is expensive to mount a national effort to conquer disease through biomedical research. The American taxpayers are spending more than $17 billion a year for just the component of research centered about the NIH and its grants and they have a right to know about the wonderful benefits, in both fundamental knowledge and disease prevention and treatment, that are derived from this effort. Public support will follow the public’s understanding of the value and excitement of this era of biological breakthroughs. This is why FASEB maintains a public affairs program and urges its members to get involved in explaining to local and national audiences just what it is that biologists do. Ferdinand and Isabella were farsighted enough to see that an investment in exploration would pay great dividends, although neither they nor Columbus could anticipate the actual benefits. Today, we of the Golden Age of Biology must present our case with the same confidence and passion that promoted the Age of Exploration. We, too, have a new world of untold riches waiting for us. —Sidney H. Golub, Ph.D., Executive Director, FASEB