We know how fickle science—and the world around it—can be, but just imagine if next year...

A valid scientific report will describe the significant benefit of a food or vitamin for the prevention or treatment of cancer and/or an infectious disease. Not a single pharmaceutical company will applaud the discovery. MICHAEL ZASLOFF, Georgetown University

To compensate for the continuing decline of NIH-funded grant proposals, university indirect costs will shoot past 100%, forcing investigators to add song and dance routines to their speaking engagements where attendees will be requested to toss money into a hat. DAVID LYDEN, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

The US National Institutes of Health will find a way to tactfully offer free, anonymous testing for Alzheimer disease risk factors to all members of the House and Senate, as well as to their loved ones. As a result, funding for Alzheimer research will increase exponentially, preserving the wisdom of our elders and preventing the collapse of our healthcare system within the next decade or two. LENNART MUCKE, University of California in San Francisco

We are at a crossroad in public health: will G8 countries retreat from their recent commitments to the South? The new leaders of the WHO and the Global Fund must make the case for expanded G8 engagement. ARATA KOCHI, World Health Organization

The peer review system will be replaced by a series of Survivor episodes in which scientists equipped only with a spear, a rooster and three copies of their recent grant submissions compete to push each other off the increasingly shrinking Isle of Funding. BRAD BERK, University of Rochester

The establishment of sentinel plants engineered with DNA fragments of known pathogens could revolutionize the way we detect pathogens and serve as an early warning system for agents deemed useful by bioterrorists. DICKSON DESPOMMIER, Columbia University

Sometime in 2007 a safety study involving embryonic stem cells will go terribly wrong. Either a subject will have a cataclysmic immune response to a transplant and die or transplanted cells will produce a tumor or other adverse event. Critics of the research will point to this tragedy as proof of its immorality and defenders will bemoan the fact that no international regulations exist on stem cells' use in clinical trials. Arthur Caplan University of Pennsylvania