Summary:Michael Milken introduced the luncheon discussion with a series of telling charts, revealing to the audience a significant increase in the number of medical degrees earned as compared to physical and life sciences degrees, the latter being those typically responsible for scientific breakthroughs. Milken also presented data about the amount of money spent on medical research, which is decreasing as a percentage of GDP and is 40 times less than the amount of money spent on health care.
In light of those facts, Milken posed the question, "Would a company that is having problems with its product spend money on customer service?"
The distinguished panel of Nobel laureates spent the next hour responding, touching upon how the scientific community has dealt with and is dealing with issues ranging from the ecosystem to disease and the importance of considering humanity in scientific progress, in spite of the lack of investment.
Steven Chu, Nobel laureate in Physics, was the first to shed light on the past, present, and future of science and medicine, focusing his comments on global warming and climate change. Chu noted that the mass global consumption by the industrialized world of the least abundant energy sources has caused the recent global warming trend; the climate change that is so widely discussed is really "more weather than climate," as he brought up a slide showing a one degree Celsius increase in the climate over the last 100 years. Chu′s main concern was the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is highly correlated with a rise in temperature. Carbon dioxide increased by 18 percent in the past 44 years, a spike that had never been seen before. Chu warned that a continued trend in this direction would be catastrophic, with effects that include the submersion of lands in coastal areas including the Bay of Bengal, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico.
Ahmed Zewail, a Nobel laureate in chemistry discussed how scientists tackle problems in molecular medicine. While scientists are relatively advanced in medical technologies, they find themselves "back at the drawing board" when it comes to understanding macro molecules. It is important for scientists to grasp the architecture of molecules, including their sequencing, and most importantly, their behavior over time. Understanding these concepts and being creative about the research will result in tremendous opportunities in medicine. However, Dr. Zewail, a native of non-industrialized Egypt, warned that the developed world makes up only 20 percent of the planet and new technologies should incorporate all of humanity, to ensure peace.
The next panelist to present his view of the future of scientific discovery was Sydney Brenner, Nobel laureate in Medicine. Brenner explained his lack of slides for this discussion in his quip, "Slides are about the past and we want to talk about the future." He spoke of sequencing the genome, the research that led to his Nobel recognition. Brenner pointed out that many people compared DNA genomics to putting a man on the moon, agreeing that it is easy to get a man on the moon; the difficulty is in getting him back. Likewise, it is easy to sequence a human genome, but difficult to know what to do with it afterwards. Brenner cited two major challenges for scientists to overcome — communicating knowledge to the world and studying humanity and its differences. A third challenge was directed to society at large; Brenner was concerned with the intense conservatism of people who fund research and want to know in advance whether it will work. In order to find innovative solutions to today′s problems, Brenner said that it was vital to create funding for innovative scientific research, half-jokingly comparing it to a gamble.
Milken concurred with Brenner, observing that "perhaps the gamble is in not giving the money," and introduced the final panelist, Joshua Lederberg, Nobel laureate in Medicine.
As Lederberg promised to carry audience members to "cloud nine" with his discussion of germs and genes, he discussed the history of scientific attitude toward germs, which tended to separate them from genes as microbes that freely entered and exited the body. Lederberg claims that there is a sharing of the body between germs and genes and both play a large role in health and disease, taking the audience through a description of humanity′s relationship with germs. Lederberg noted that society has been successful in overpowering many types germs (or parasites), as is evident by the declinein mortality from infectious disease, but is naïve in its belief that humans are an equal match for the determined and capable parasites that inhabit human beings. While most germs are easily able to kill their host, their restraint is for the purpose of their own existence. This is a fact that takes its toll on society, which focuses most of its research on hyper-virulent germs, such as AIDS instead of researching more moderate germs, that could lead to many answers.
Milken followed the panelists′ presentations with a question and answer session that touched upon the ineffectiveness of quarantines in many cases, the importance of scientists' dealing with global issues, the need to focus on prevention, and the improbability of the permanent eradication of diseases.
