Biomedical Institutions, Biomedical Funding, and Public Policy

The world is on the threshold of a great new industrial revolution, a 1 scientific-industrial revolution. Recombinant DNA technology and hybridoma technology ("monoclonal antibodies") have already pro vided unique investment opportunities for venture capitalists. Hence published reports of biomedical research are no longer restricted to scientific journals, but now appear regularly not only in weekly news 2 magazines like Time and U. S. News & World Report,3 but also in the financial sections of The New York Times,4 The Wall Street Journal,S 6 8 Business Week, Fortune,7 and The Economist, as well as in such stock 9 market advisory publications as New Issues and Inc. (The Magazine for Growing Companies). 10 These publications now appear to be as impor tant to biomedical scientists in keeping abreast of new scientific devel opments in biotechnology as is Current Contents. (The costs of health cost provision and of fundamental biomedical research are now also being followed by such media. ) Conversely, Wall Street financial bro kers increasingly no longer confine their reading to economic journals but are also perusing Nature,ll Science,12 and Science N 13 for infor ews mation on both fiscal and scientific advances in these areas. It is obvious that the information explosion in biotechnology is crossing traditional boundaries (e. g. , ref. 14). This volume is the second of several that are intended to inform both the biomedical community and interested intelligent laymen of the political and economic implications of biomedical research.