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Will biomedicine outgrow support?

Nature volume 399, pages 299–301 (1999)Cite this article

The number of scientists in the biomedical field is growing exponentially at rates that outstrip funding. The present system of short-term research grants, resulting in armies of postdocs without career prospects, must be changed.

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Figure 1: Semilogarithmic plot of membership of some American societies during this century.
Figure 2: Number of scientists at work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, with branches in Hamburg, Grenoble and Cambridge; the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island (CSHL), New York, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge.
Figure 3: Costs per scientist and per bench worker (scientists and technical staff) employed by the UK MRC.
Figure 4: Government expenditure on medical research in the United States, Britain and Germany from 1950.
Figure 5: Growth in numbers of NIH grant awardees and of the scientific staff of the MRC and the MPG.

Notes

  1. * Ernst & Young, Inc. 12th Biotechnology Industry Annual Report: New Directions 1998 and European Life Sciences 1998: Continental Shift. 5th Industry Annual Report.

Acknowledgements

I thank the following people for statistical data on the various organizations: David Smith, MRC; Hubert Markl, Max-Planck Gesellschaft; Harold Varmus, NIH; Rose Grimm, FASEB; T. D. Inch, Royal Society of Chemistry; Philip Diamond, Institute of Physics; M. Bowen, American Chemical Society; Roman Czujko, American Institute of Physics; James Watson, CSHL; Mary Holmes, EMBL; Heinrich von Diek, Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker; and Heinz Metzger, Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie. I thank S. Solomou for advice on economics.

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  1. the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Hills Road, CB2 2QH , Cambridge, UK

    M. F. Perutz

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Perutz, M. Will biomedicine outgrow support?. Nature 399, 299–301 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/20538

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