BIOMEDICAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE SERVICE OF MAN: THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST

This article is largely based on a lecture given to CARA (the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics) on 20 November 2014 in the series of Science and Civilisation. It examines the role of refugee academics in the scientific enterprise. It challenges the established dogma of basic versus applied research and describes how this evolved in the Western world. It emphasises how the nature of biomedical research has to change to meet the social function of science and the social responsibility of the scientist. The move from the individual to more organised groups to solve major problems is taking place in many countries and particularly in Asia as exemplified in Singapore. Governments all over the world are looking more and more for “outcomes” of their investments in biomedical research, and scientific communities cannot ignore this anymore.

The intense discussions in Europe about admitting recent refugees coming mostly from Arab countries ignore the fact that beginning with the historical exodus of the 1930s, much of scientific research in the UK and the US has been dependent on refugee academics. The most notable examples come from the many Jewish scientists fleeing from Nazi oppression in Central Europe when Hitler closed the universities to Jews. In 1933 William Beveridge, the then Director of the London School of Economics, recognised that there was a need for an urgent response to deal with the humanitarian crisis and lobbied the UK Government to allow institutions, universities and individuals to find financial support for both young and established scholars of science, humanities and social sciences. In 1933 Beveridge founded the Academic Assistance Council which three years later was incorporated as the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning. More recently in 1999 the organisation was renamed Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA). I will refer to all the organisations since 1933 as CARA.

The spectacular success of CARA in helping academics initially from Germany, Austria and Hungary, who brought with them rich cultural legacies, had a major influence on science and research in the UK after the war. About a hundred of them became Fellows of the Royal Society or the British Academy and over 15 won Nobel Prizes. Albert Einstein was a great supporter and fundraiser of the work of CARA and in a ground-breaking lecture to a packed auditorium in the Royal Albert Hall on 3 October 1933 before he departed for the US, he spoke of the need for academic freedom and encouraged his audience to “resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom”.

On the 80th Anniversary of CARA a collection of essays was published in The Times Higher Education Supplement.1 The charity also decided to initiate an annual lecture series on Science and Civilisation. The inaugural lecture was given by Jim Al-Khalili, professor of physics and public engagement in science at the University of Surrey on a very pertinent topic: “Science, Rationalism and Academic Freedom in the Arab World”.

Since its inception CARA has continued to respond to changed circumstance, like the Hungarian and Polish revolutions and their refugees, and most recently to events in places like Iraq, Zimbabwe and Syria, by spreading knowledge in countries with closed borders. The progress of the organisation has been described in the comprehensive second edition of Jeremy Seabrook’s book: The Refugee and the Fortress.2

It is of course not only the political changes in the whole world but the changing scene of sciences and in particular the biomedical sciences that we need to examine in relation to the role of science in our society. Einstein famously remarked that “science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it and that the whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”

Nowadays many scientists are looking for financial rewards for their work and regard themselves as the elite group who has the “right” to practise science to satisfy their curiosity. I shall examine this “dogma” later and in the meantime remember the remarks of Rudolf Ladenburg, a German atomic physicist who emigrated from Germany as early as 1932 and became a Brackett Research Professor at Princeton University. When the wave of German emigration began in earnest in 1933, he was the principal job placement coordinator for exiled physicists in the United States. Making a distinction between geniuses and the rest of the science community, he said: “There were two kinds of physicists in Berlin: on the one hand there was Einstein, and on the other all the rest.”3

CREATIVITY AND THE FUNCTION OF SCIENCE

Amazingly in 1939, the height of great fundamental discoveries in physics, J. D. Bernal, a controversial scientist, who pioneered the use of X-ray crystallography in molecular biology, published his book The Social Function of Science.4 In the chapter “Science in the Service of Man”, he said: “Science has ceased to be the occupation of curious gentlemen of ingenious minds supported by wealthy patrons, and has become an industry supported by large industrial monopolies and by the State. Imperceptibly this has altered the character of science from an individual to a collective basis, and has enhanced the importance of apparatus and administration.” He also wrote: “The scientist has to consider the impact of his activities upon his own life as a citizen and upon the world politics of his times. Unless scientists work actively with those social forces which understand their functions and march to the same ends there can only be ‘frustration of science’ ending in ill-balanced utilisation of available finance of science in relation to a properly planned social economy and strategy of scientific advance in the service of man.” This was considered as a revolutionary stance on science, one that is questioned by many scientists even today. Yet, of course, this idea goes back all the way to Francis Bacon (1561–1626) stating “one general admonition to all; that they consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or fame, or power, or any of these inferior things; but for the benefit and use of life; and that they perfect and govern it in charity.”

The notion of creativity in science had strong support from Sir Karl Popper (1902–1994) the Austrian–British philosopher, known for his rejection of the classical inductionist views on the scientific method, in favour of empirical falsification.

Creativity, inspiration, flashes of insight had a central position in Popper’s thinking, a view shared by Sir Peter Medawar (1915–1987), Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology and Medicine: “Nobody should believe that discovery would only come through the inductive process and incompatible with the idea that scientists exercised their creative faculty like in the arts.”5

I recently rediscovered in my personal library a conference proceedings given to me by Melvin Calvin who was very influential in my own scientific development when I spent a postdoctoral year in his laboratory at Berkeley in 1966. The document is entitled: “Research in the Service of Man, Biomedical Knowledge Development and Use”, and was prepared for the US Senate.6 The meeting was originated by President Lyndon Johnson. He wrote in his introduction to the meeting: “Finally, I state my hope that the deliberations at this seminar will initiate a continuous, systematic assessment and evaluation of the ways in which new knowledge can be best translated into better health and a fuller life for American citizens and for all mankind.” Many distinguished authors and speakers from academia, industry, research institutes, funding agencies and the world of politics addressed the issue of basic versus applied science at the seminar. Among them were Alvin Weinberg, a renowned nuclear physicist who was Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory during and after the Manhattan Project. He reflected: “We must recognise the inefficiency of research, it is a gamble. To hedge the gamble, a basic researcher generally tries things that he is relatively sure about. But such things, representing very small forward steps, or even no step forward but rather sideward manoeuvres, advance science relatively little. The big payoff either requires the greatest gamble or comes in an unpremeditated way.” He also emphasised that “there is a difference between the physical and biological sciences with respect to the degree to which their underlying scientific structure can be efficiently mobilised for achieving practical goals. It is a reflection on the complexity and enormous difficulty of biomedical problems. I think it is fair to say that most basic molecular biologists would work directly on a cure for cancer rather than on what they are doing, if only they knew how to make real progress. We don’t cure cancer not because we don’t want to, but rather because we don’t know how to cure it.”7 These were very wise words from 50 years ago and to some extent still apply today. In 1995 Sir Joseph Rotblat (1908–2005), British-naturalised Polish physicist, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Pugwash Conferences, the organisation he helped to found, said in his lecture: “Science used to be a hobby, the main motivation for scientific investigation was curiosity but without any expected applications; however at the end of the 20th century we have to ask the question: should scientists be concerned with the social consequences of their work?”8

REVOLUTIONS IN BIOLOGICAL RESARCH

Let us examine the progress of biomedical research and to what extent some of these ideas about social responsibilities have penetrated the research community. The period 1900–1950 can be regarded as something of a “Golden Age” of biochemistry with Otto Warburg (1883–1970) being one of the 20th century’s leading biochemists. He received the 1931 Nobel Prize in Physiology for his “discovery of the nature and mode of action of the respiratory enzyme”. He firmly believed that “cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarised in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar.” Even in 1996 he repeated this view in a lecture at the meeting of the Nobel Laureates on 30 June at Lindau, when he was Director of the Max Planck Institute for Cell Physiology, Berlin-Dahlem. By and large the cancer research community ignored the view that metabolism has a major role in cancer until about the last ten years when cancer metabolism has become a major topic again. Warburg’s student Sir Hans Krebs (1900–1981) emigrated to the UK and working in Sheffield and later as Head of Biochemistry Oxford (1954–1967) laid the foundation of mammalian metabolism and received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1953 for the discovery in living organisms of the series of chemical reactions known as the tricarboxylic acid cycle, or Krebs cycle.

The emergence of molecular biology is regarded by many as the First Revolution in biology (1950–2000). The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge had a unique place in this with the discovery of the double helix and the Nobel Prize to Watson and Crick in 1953, two Nobel Prizes for Fred Sanger for protein (1958) and DNA (1980) sequencing and the Prize for John Kendrew and Max Perutz for the crystal structure of myoglobin and haemoglobin (1962). Many other major advances in the USA and elsewhere created an excitement in biology that resulted in the separation of biochemistry from molecular biology and tended to diminish wider interest in biochemistry, particularly among the younger generation.9

The Second Revolution, the Genomic Revolution started in 2000 when the draft map of the human genome was announced and published on 15 February 2001.10 Following the announcement there was a historic transatlantic teleconference between No. 10 in the UK and the White House. I had the pleasure of sitting at Tony Blair’s conference room who said: “Ever so often in the history of human endeavour, there comes a breakthrough that takes humankind across a frontier into a new era. … today’s announcement is such a breakthrough, a breakthrough that opens the way for massive advancement in the treatment of cancer and hereditary diseases. And that is only the beginning.” On the other side President Bill Clinton remarked: “We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human kind.” Indeed this was only the beginning and since then progress in genomics has been phenomenal. During this time a new attitude started to develop in the scientific community towards “big biology” and teamwork.

Phillip Sharp and his colleagues at MIT produced a white paper about the Third Revolution in biomedical research describing the emerging field of convergence – which brings together the life sciences, the physical sciences and engineering.11 “Convergence is a new paradigm that can yield critical advances in a broad array of sectors, from healthcare to energy, food, climate and water.” In my view the revolution is in the process of applying integrated science to tackle major problems in society.

The complexity of life is a major challenge and the biology of the whole system must be one of the major targets. For some time I have referred to this as molecular physiology. But in spite of descriptions of the changing nature of science many in the scientific community and some of their leaders and politicians “share a common belief: that unfettered, curiosity driven basic research is the foundation for technological innovation and economic growth”, a view strongly challenged by Daniel Sarewitz in a piece in Nature entitled: “Kill the Myth of the Miracle Machine”.12 The debate about applied versus basic research still continues around the globe. Why are these opinions so embedded? It all started in 1945 with a hugely influential report to President Roosevelt by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. “Science the Endless Frontier” asserted a dichotomy between basic and applied science.13 This view was at the core of the compact between government and science that led to a golden age of scientific research after the Second World War. Bush’s linear model was based on two fundamental postulates: first, “basic research is performed without thought of practical ends”, and second, “basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress”. The enormous success of US scientific research meant that the whole world adopted this model and even recently emerging powerhouses of science are following this way of doing science. Donald Stokes challenged Bush’s view in his book Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation (1997).14 He recasts the widely accepted view of the tension between understanding and use, citing as a model case the fundamental yet use-inspired studies by which Louis Pasteur laid the foundations of microbiology more than a century before. Stokes argued that “the rationale behind Bush’s linear model arose from the classical ideal of knowledge for its own sake, which had been institutionalised in American and European universities. Even the Baconian ideal of knowledge as power or utility, which had such a great influence in America, became recast into a linear model by rejecting the notion that a fusion of science and technology would have an immediate benefit.”

On a narrower perspective the linear model is applied to challenges like: from gene function to improved health; when we start with gene structure, gene function, model organisms to move to translational and patient oriented research and with population studies we create knowledge; knowledge about drug targets, understanding disease variability and understanding treatment. Such knowledge will then generate the outcomes: commercial products, improvements in clinical practice and more effective health policy.

For some time I have advocated that biomedical research should be considered as a continuum and a circular model where interactions between different modalities occur in reversible ways as also the outcomes often determine the way such modalities are approached (Figure below).

THE BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH CONTINUUM: A CIRCULAR MODEL

This approach requires teamwork and not just collaborations between small groups. In a way Sharp’s idea of convergence classically applies to this model. Biologists by tradition have not worked out how teamwork can recognise the individual scientist and we should learn from the particle physicists how they can do this. The successful search for the “Higgs particle” at CERN in Geneva was a global project involving 6,500 scientists and 500 institutions.

What are the key drivers for research planning and vision in biomedicine? This is a question I tried to answer as outlined below when I was in charge of the Medical Research Council UK:

•  Discovery science for health;

•  Health priorities;

•  Bringing engineering and physical sciences to provide new solutions;

•  From science to health care, industry and public policy – translational approaches;

•  Developing the workforce;

•  Public expectation;

•  Providing a lead in good governance.

Strategic planning for research is still opposed by some scientists. Donald Braben, after sixteen years in nuclear structure and high-energy physics research, followed by senior positions at the Cabinet Office in Whitehall and the Science Research Council, wrote a book entitled: Scientific Freedom: The Elixir of Civilisation.15 He spoke, among other contributors, at a meeting of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee in 2012 asking the question: “Is scientific freedom the elixir of civilisation?” Braben asserted that “scientific research funding today is dominated by bureaucracy. However, science is concerned with exploring the unknown whereas procedural correctness is paramount in bureaucracy. The Research Councils have now imposed an additional policy, ‘Pathway to Impact’. This new policy inhibits creativity because it forces academics to consider factors other than the purely scientific when contemplating what they want to do next.” Separately Braben had 20 signatories for a letter to The Daily Telegraph, 2 June 2014, on “The damaging bureaucracy of academic peer preview”. Braben writes about the 20th Century Planck Club: “The twentieth century was strongly influenced by the work of a relatively small number of scientists: Planck, Einstein, Fermi, Perutz, Crick and Watson, Gabor, Townes, McClintock, etc.”, and expresses the opinion that “the major scientific discoveries of the 20th century would not have happened under today’s rules, they would not get funding now”.16

I disagree that the rare geniuses would not be able to operate effectively in the present system. The weakness of Braben’s argument is that 99.9 per cent of the scientists do not belong to the Planck Club and the majority are good and productive and would benefit from engaging in solving major problems. Their contribution to society would be enhanced by putting their skills together in a more organised manner. Luckily some major organisations recognise the importance of social responsibilities.

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) established a Science and Society initiative. “More than ever, there is a need for multidisciplinary dialogue to inspire synthetic insights and a common world view. The new ways in which science is now being applied for the production of knowledge and economic wealth must be carefully adjusted to public interests and the value system in each society. It is the common responsibility of all scientists, to engage in an ongoing process of carving out a shared understanding of science.”

The Royal Society considered science, technology and social responsibility in several publications.17

What Is the Responsibility of the Research Funder?

•  Based on the best advice formulate a scientific strategy and a long term vision for its science;

•  To identify and develop talent;

•  To have the courage to make decisions even if they are unpopular;

•  To build trust with Government by providing well formulated and developed advice;

•  To build relationships with stakeholders of scientific advance: industry, health-care providers;

•  To consider and participate in the global scene;

•  To ensure and inform the general population about the value and outcomes of ethically conducted scientific research.

The Social Responsibility of the Scientist:

•  Doing research at the taxpayers’ expense is a privilege and not an inherent right;

•  Advancing fundamental knowledge is as important as applying it to the benefit of society;

•  The distinction is not basic or applied but good or poor science;

•  Selfish research has no longer a role in today’s science. Working in teams is more productive;

•  The notion that every scientist is so brilliant that the only way science proceeds is to support the best to do what they like is false and no longer tenable;

•  Creativity is hard to select for but requires the right environment.

I now turn to an example of planned integrated teamwork and its controversy: the UK Biobank.18 It was set up after extensive scientific consultation and evaluation in 2000–2002. When it was announced Robin McKei wrote, following an interview with me:19 “George Radda was a 20-year-old chemistry student in Budapest in 1956 when the Hungarian uprising ended in brutal Soviet reprisal. In true adventure book style with a briefcase, a spare shirt and a handful of cash, he took his sister and his younger brother and fled. In this way one of our most distinguished medical academics entered the West penniless and without friends. Next month, however, Radda will have to call on all the friends he has got, for he is entering in an area of medical research, the creation of a genetic database which stirs up strong feelings.” The MRC was forced to defend, brought by the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, against charges ranging from “making capricious funding decisions to inadequately consulting the research community over plans for the $70 million Biobank, a huge data repository on the genetics and lifestyle of the British population”. The uninformed political views came as a result of pressure groups of scientists who perceived that their small research grants will suffer as a result of a major national programme, a sentiment still often expressed by individuals. Some 14 years later however we are able to show that Biobank has been a resounding success.

The UK Biobank project is the world’s biggest resource for the study of the role of nature and nurture in health and disease. Six Regional Collaborating Centres (network of 23 research facilities) are involved in the study, which comprises some 500,000 participants aged between 45 and 69 years who gave blood and urine samples, lifestyle details and their medical histories. A huge central storage facility will keep 10 million samples at -80°C for the next 30 years. The information will be regularly updated and the resource is made available to researchers in academia and industry. Many disorders, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease are caused by complex interactions between genes, environment and lifestyle. This combination of information will enable researchers to improve our understanding of the biology of disease, leading to improved diagnostic tools, prevention strategies and tailor-made treatments for disorders that appear in later life.

At the UK Biobank Frontiers meeting on 26 June 2014 Professor Sir John Savill, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council said: “The UK Biobank is our Hadron Collider”, while Professor Rory Collins, UK Biobank Principal Investigator, remarked that “Biobank is a unique combination of scale, depth and breadth”.20 In May 2014 a UK Biobank Imaging enhancement was announced. Of the 500,000 subjects 100,000 will be chosen for a comprehensive imaging phenotype analysis (brain, cardiac, whole body MRI, 3D Carotid Ultra Sound, DEXA). This addition is already well on the way under the leadership of Professor Paul Mathews.

This example clearly shows that interference by politicians on deciding research priorities is less than helpful. In the UK the Research Councils have operated under the so-called “Haldane Principle”. Namely, Government support for science is essential but the amount of money any given country can and will allocate is an economic and political decision. Once the funding is made available, how it is spent in the best interest of scientific advances, healthcare delivery and economic value has to be given to responsible, well organised funding agencies.

In 2017 the UK Research Council system and Funding Agencies underwent a major change. Following the passage of the Higher Education and Research Act in April 2017, a new legal entity – UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – was established and will formally start on 1 April 2018. On that date, the MRC will become part of UKRI, along with the other six research councils, as well as Innovate UK and Research England. The MRC will cease to be a legal entity or have a Royal Charter. UKRI will have a combined budget of more than £6 billion and will ensure that the UK maintains a world-leading research and innovation position by creating the best environment for research and innovation to flourish, and will play a central role in delivering the government’s industrial strategy.21

While the Western world evolved its science over a long period, new approaches are emerging in South East Asia. Singapore with a population of only 4.5 million has become a major player in scientific research within a relatively short period of time. Firstly, a few years before the independence of the country in 1965, Lee Kuan Yew, the Founding Father and first Prime Minister of Singapore said: “I believe our future depends upon our ability to mobilise the qualities in our population to maximum advantage. It is the one thing we have which makes up for our lack of size and numbers, and it is of the utmost importance that, in the field of science and technology, we should lead the field in this part of the world.” Secondly, the transformation of Singapore’s economy from a labour-intensive to a technology and knowledge driven economy required that science and technology should be planned at the national level, beginning with the First National Technology Plan in 1991. Thirdly, a highly organised Governance and Research Structure has been developed directly under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council chaired by the Prime Minister. As an example of how rapidly progress can be made, in 1999 a decision was taken that in order to attract pharmaceutical and biotech industry the country needed a biomedical Research & Development capability. In 14 years through the imaginative development of research institutes, speed, decisiveness, hard work and committed leadership, the country’s biomedical research sector became a powerhouse.22

Just like the UK, the Singapore Government is also looking at ways of improving the economic and health benefits of the research strategy and enhancing collaborations between different sectors of the country.

Science is global and the movement of scientists between countries and working across countries (e.g. the EU) is an essential part of modern scientific development. But increasingly the wealth of a country will depend on the knowledge it accrues and how it applies it, even when valuable resources are available to it. It is a fallacy to believe that such knowledge can be exploited without home-grown capacity for scientific research and technological know-how. Large countries, small countries, developing countries, wealthy or poor must adapt their plans for their research to link to national and local needs to create services to society.

In Western Europe several small countries have significant research and development programmes, (Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands) but they all use different models for research support and looking at them requires a separate and detailed study. In general, in the Anglo-Saxon model (USA, UK) we have strong research universities and fewer institutional research and many of the latter are embedded in universities. The German model, in contrast, places much emphasis on institutions (e.g. Max Planck, Helmholtz, Fraunhofer) and often requires special efforts to bring university research to a competitive level.

WHERE DOES HUNGARIAN SCIENCE FIT IN?

Without going into a detailed objective analysis of the structures, quality and achievements of R&D in Hungary it would be inappropriate to provide a critique of the changes or developments required for the country to become a major force on the global research scene, or indeed that it is or is not meeting its expectations in the national context as described above. A few observations, however, largely based on my own experience particularly in the biomedical field might be of interest to the local community of scientists and their leaders.

Hungary had a long tradition in scientific research which suffered during the restrictions of the Communist period. In the new recovery phase it relies on both institutional research through the Institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and university- based research, largely confined to the major established universities. Consideration has to be given to the initiation of a large number of new university entities. The gap and tension between institutional and university-based research has been significant but in recent years has improved. Since about 2010 the Academy has developed a new research network, comprising 10 research centres, five research institutes and more than 130 research groups at public institutions, mainly at universities. The research network addresses discovery and targeted research, in cooperation with universities and corporations. At the same time a significant new development has been the setting up in 2015 of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office founded by an Act of Parliament with the aim to “create stable institutional framework for the governmental coordination of the national research, development and innovation ecosystem”. This office is directly linked to the Prime Minister’s Office and is a national strategic and funding agency for scientific research, development and innovation, the primary source of advice on RDI policy for the Hungarian Government, and the primary RDI funding agency. It appears that lack of funding is not so much an issue but the optimal use of available funds between the two streams of support via the Academy’s network and NRDI national strategy needs a deeper understanding than is possible for an outsider. In the light of the analysis in this article an objective and internally initiated examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the way science is done in Hungary might be appropriate.

OVERALL CONCLUSIONS

Biomedical research has undergone some major revolutions in the last fifty years. Organised science is not inconsistent with original investigation in conditions of complete freedom. To paraphrase Sir Charles Harington, in his Linacre Lecture, 6 May 1958: As scientists if we desire our profession to make its proper contribution to civilisation, we must accept the conditions imposed by the more highly organised society in which we have to live.23

Notes:

1 CARA 80th Anniversary. The Times Higher Education Supplement, 2 May 2012.

2 Jeremy Seabrook, The Refuge and the Fortress, Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd ed., 2013.

3 Quoted in Einstein 1905, The Standard of Greatness by John S. Rigden, Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 13.

4 J. D. Bernal, The Social Function of Science, George Routledge & Sons, 2nd ed., 1940.

5 Peter Medawar, The Limits of Science, Oxford University Press, 1984.

6 “Research  in  the  Service  of  Man:  Biomedical  Knowledge,  Development  and  Use”.  Senate Document No. 55, 2 November 1967.

7 Alvin M. Weinberg, Prospects for Big Biology, pp. 32–43 in ref. 6.

8 Joseph Rotblat, “Social Responsibility of the Scientist”, Newsletter of the Marie Curie Fellowship Association, 2000, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 1–2.

9 Soraya Chadarevian, Designs for Life, Molecular Biology after World War II, Cambridge University Press, 2002. A study of the history of LMB in the context of general developments in molecular biology.

10 “International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (2001). Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome”. Nature 409 (6822), pp. 860–921.

11 The Third Revolution. The Convergence of the Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering, MIT White Paper by Philip Sharp et al., January 2011. For more information about this report contact the MIT Washington Office, 820 1st Street, Washington DC 20002.

12 Daniel Sarewitz, “Kill the Myth of the Miracle Machine”, Nature, 2017, 547,139.

13 “Science the Endless Frontier”. A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945 (United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1945).

14 Donald E. Stokes, Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation, Brookings Institution Press, 1 August 1997. New edition 1 March 2011

15 M Donald W. Braben, Scientific Freedom: The Elixir of Civilisation, Wiley, March 2008.

16 M Donald W. Braben, Promoting the Planck Club: How Defiant Youth, Irreverent Researchers and Liberated Universities Can Foster Prosperity Indefinitely, Wiley, April 2014.

17 M Science, Technology and Social Responsibility, Royal Society Publishing, January 1999, New ISBN: 9780854035304.

18 The UK Biobank, see Website for details: www.ukbiobank.ac.uk.

19 “The Gene Collector”, British Medical Journal, 321, 7 October 2000, p. 854. “As the Medical Research Council and the Welcome Trust get ready to launch their national genetic database, Robin McKie meets George Radda, the man who is spearheading the project.”

20 Tag Archives: Frontiers event. Hear from the UK Government Scientific Adviser. Tags: Frontiers event. June 2014. Listen again: UK Biobank Frontiers Meeting, www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/tag/ frontiers-event/.

21 UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), www.ukri.org/.

22 George Radda, “Building a Research Powerhouse in 14 Years”, Business Times (Singapore), 25 Oct. 2013.

23 Sir Charles Harington Linacre Lecture (1958): “The Place of the Research Institute in the Advance of Medicine”. The Lancet, Volume 271, Issue 7035, pp. 1345–1351.

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