>> From the Library of Congress, in Washington, D.C.
>> Welcome everyone.
Thank you so much for coming.
Today's event is sponsored by Science,
Technology and Business Division.
And today, we were going to have Dr. Billington, Librarian of Congress
for the welcome remarks, but he unfortunately couldn't make it.
But we are very fortunate
to have Deputy Librarian of Congress, Mr. Dizard.
>> Hi, good morning.
It is a real pleasure for me.
On behalf of all of my colleagues at the Library,
to welcome our panelists and all our guests here today
for this program this morning.
This library, the Library of Congress,
is very much Congress' library.
We assist members and committees every day here
in their legislative responsibilities,
even during shut downs, we're here doing that.
But it's also, the Library
of Congress is also the Nation's library.
We are, this is the place where the record of America is kept,
its history, its achievements, its advancements,
and that includes its scientific advancements.
And it's a particular pleasure for us, it's really an honor for us,
to be able to welcome people here at the Library who have made
such significant contributions to that record
of scientific advancement.
Our collections of scientific material here
at the Library probably can be traced right back to 1815,
when Congress purchased Thomas Jefferson's library as a way
to restore their library which had been burned the year before
when the Capitol was burned.
And the reason why that was so significant was really
in one act you went from a library that was about 3,000 volumes,
that was pretty much a legal, economic, historical works library,
to a library that was universal.
That collected in the arts, in the sciences, in foreign languages.
Jefferson probably had the best personal library at that time.
The story goes that he was, in order to raise some money,
he was trying to decide whether to sell his library
or his wine collection, and we're glad he decided on the library.
But that expanded the Congressional Library really
into what would become the Nation's library.
So even since that time, our collections
in the sciences have continued to grow to one of the largest
and most diversified collections in the world.
It is looked over and continued to be built and preserved and served
by a staff that is very knowledgeable and committed
to those collections and is particularly enthusiastic.
I would point this staff out among all of our staff
as being particularly enthusiastic about sharing their collections
and providing opportunities for people
to learn more about the sciences.
So I think this event this morning is one more example of that.
So we're happy, very happy to have our panel here, and our guests,
and I will turn it back to Tomoko and we'll get the program started.
Thank you again, and welcome.
[ Applause ]
>> So today's topic is Translational Medicine,
and we have a wonderful moderator to organize this panel,
and let me introduce our moderator.
Dr. Orla Smith.
She is managing editor for the Science of Translational Medicine.
It's a new journal, and she can explain about the journal as well
as about the, what is translational medicine means,
but she is actually moved from the cell to translational medicine.
She has a medical degree, as well, from England.
And she went to Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine at the University
of London, so has a broad background, from biochemistry
to medicine, so a perfect person.
So without further adieu, Dr. Smith.
>> Well thank you very much Tomoko.
It really is great to be here, and to see such a great crowd.
And I'm really excited about our three panelists I'll shortly
be introducing.
So what is translational medicine?
So some people, translational medicine is translating the exciting
advances and discoveries of research at the bench, into new treatments
and cures for patients at the bed side.
And we need both basic and applied research in order to be able
to drive innovation and discoveries and new treatments
for the patients who really need them.
And one of the big goals today is to think
about how we can speed up this process.
And the discovery of the structure of DNA 60 years ago by Dr. Watson,
who's with us today, Dr. Crooke,
and Marce Wilkins [assumed spelling] has found many applications
in the clinic, culminating today with genome sequencing,
where patients are having their genomes sequenced, and it's helping
to inform their treatment and deciding which drugs
that they're going to be treated with.
So we have a very distinguished panel today,
and I'd like to perhaps invite them to come up
and then I can introduce them,
and then we can get started with the program.
So I think our first panelist, Dr. Jim Watson,
doesn't need any introduction at all.
Dr. Watson is Chancellor Emeritus of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories,
and as we all know, in 1962, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine for the discovery of the structure of DNA,
which was 60 years ago this year,
along with Dr. Frances Crick, and Dr. Morris Wilkins.
Our next panelist is Dr. Carol Greider,
who is the Daniel Nathans Professor and Director of Molecular Biology
and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution.
And Dr. Greider received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine for the discovery of telomers
and the end zone telomerase, which protects the ends of chromosomes,
and she received the prize along
with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Jack Szostak.
And our final panelist is Dr. Elliott Crooke, who is Professor
and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular
and Cell Biology, at Georgetown University Medical Center,
and Dr. Crooke's research focuses on cell cycle control
of chromosomal DNA replication, and also a new avenue of research
in his lab is cellular responses to environmental stress.
So I'd like you all to welcome our panel.
[ Applause ]
>> So I'm first going to ask the panel one
by one what the term translational medicine means to them
and how they think their work has contributed
to moving translational medicine forward.
So perhaps, Dr. Watson, would you like to start us off?
>> I think it obviously means something which can be applied
to benefit human existence, whether in medicine or in criminal justice,
or a whole variety of things.
So I think that's, it sounds pretty obvious,
the day we found the double helix, we didn't think
about its translational consequences, and we just wanted
to know how DNA worked, and then with time,
it was only with the arrival of recombinant DNA 20 years ago
that you can immediately, you know, you could have a gene,
that could begin to, you know words like gene therapy then appeared.
So it was 20 years, sort of in pure science,
and then the translational thing, I think you know pure science is sort
of a, and it's sort of in a snob way looked down on translational people,
and but in fact if you looked and tried to foresee this future,
of this century, was going to be really happen - was it going to be
in pure science or translational, I'd put my bet on translational.
And I'm a little scared when they want a big building
and say it's only pure science,
I'm scared of pure science getting rather pedantic
and boring, whereas the [chuckles] -
>> I think it's very dangerous, pure science becoming boring?
>> [Laughing] No, no, I'm just saying something else I wish was
more important, but any way you look at it, discovering a new sub-unit
of RNA polymerase-1, [chuckles] so you know, you have to put it
in perspective, you know,
are you going to be a hero if you stop Alzheimer's?
Yes, you'll be on a stamp, you'll find a new sub-unit
of RNA polymerase-1 and they're, you know, how you pout.
It's, you'll be lucky if you're included
in your institution's annual report [laughter].
>> So to follow up on that,
I think that there is a very good relationship between basic science
and translational science.
I also started off as a really, a fundamental researcher,
just curiosity-driven, science trying to understand how telomeres,
the ends of chromosomes are maintained.
It was actually Jim Watson's paper that set us off looking
for how do you maintain the ends of chromosomes,
from a theoretical paper that he wrote in 1973,
and really was a curiosity driven question.
It was really basic science.
But then by continuing to follow our curiosity, of course it's going
to be interesting what the implications are, and so I often
like to say that you know there's basic science,
and then translational science, and you need to have that spring
of basic science, because if you don't have all those thoughts coming
up, there's nothing to translate.
So the two are really interdependent,
and the translational science has the opportunity then
to have therapeutics and that kind of thing.
So you think you really need both.
Today, people talk about, you know, should we put our emphasis
on translational science or on basic science, and the answer is,
of course you have to do both.
You have to have the - you have
to understand what the polymerase sub-unit is in order to be able
to do the science later on, so they build on each other.
And I think that that interdependence is what
is important.
And I certainly have found a lot of satisfaction in seeing some
of the things that we've done actually help patients.
>> And Dr. Crooke?
>> Um, I'd sit there and, the introduction you gave
about translational science I found was accurate, but I would add
to that, it's not only bench to bedside, but from the bedside back
to the bench, because, you know, doing the basic science research,
I was trained as a classic entomologist,
and part of it is a passion to understand, you know,
a fundamental biochemical, cellular, physiologic process,
and you're doing it just for the sake of knowledge,
but it sometimes what's - when you see that it can have implications
in the delivery of medicine, you know, that's rewarding.
And often what happens now is coming from the patient
through the clinician, back to the basic scientist asking, you know,
what's the molecular underlying pathologies going on,
you get that idea of translationals.
The interdependence that is said, you know,
they really have to work together.
You can't have one without the other.
>> Can you give a particular example of bedside back to bench?
>> From bedside back to bench, so,
the one that my group's now just getting started is we've had a wound
healing clinic at Georgetown University Medical Center,
and one of the clinicians was interested
in about how could you enhance the wound healing activities,
also start looking at the microbiome that's at the wound,
and so they're coming back saying, you know, we have some questions
that they want to understand some of the basic science, and so you start
that dialogue between the clinician who's seeing problems
with their patients, coming back to the scientists
who can maybe help them answer some of the underlying principles.
>> And Dr. Greider, maybe you'd like to follow
on from there, the two-way street?
>> Yeah, definitely it is a two-way street.
I certainly have found it very exciting to see some of the work
that we've done in understanding telomeres and age-related disease,
make it into the clinical realm, and my colleague,
Dr. Mary Armanios [assumed spelling] who is at Johns Hopkins,
now sees patients with these age-related diseases.
We thought at first that the major disease, due to short telomeres,
was a bone marrow failure syndrome, but by seeing these patients
and going and doing the genetics in the family,
what Mary recognized were these patients also had something called
idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
She then went on to show that, in fact, what was idiopathic,
idiopathic means we don't know what causes it,
that this is actually caused by short telomeres.
And so by seeing the patients and understanding what was going
on in those families, she then made the hypothesis
that pulmonary fibrosis is due to short telomeres,
so then took that back to the lab, and we went back to our mice,
and then we tested in the mice, and we could ask experiments,
why is it that there would be a lung disease associated
with short telomeres, so that definitely goes in both directions.
>> And Dr. Watson, you were one of the first people
to have your DNA sequenced.
What surprises were there in your DNA?
>> [Laughter] Well it was that,
and it was that people were quite adventurous, lab, not the people
in Houston, they looked at the genes coding, or variance in genes coding,
for enzymes when we metabolize drugs,
and I have a really slow metabolizer [chuckles] variant,
that I'm homozygous for, which means that if you give me, you know,
if I go wacky, and you gave me an anti-psychotic, normal dose,
it probably would send me
into neuroleptic malignant syndrome, one dose.
So I don't have that around my wrist, because I feel so sane,
but I mean [laughter] dangerous, but, you know,
and I don't metabolize beta blockers, so I think this is a case
where we can do something now,
and you don't have to sequence all the DNA.
You just have to look at these variants.
And everyone should be, uh, better utilization of drugs, so,
and it probably, you know, just takes some entrepreneurial scientist
to form a company, and just offer it, and then you know,
everyone will realize they would do it.
And I think if I were, you know,
five years younger [laughter] I'd start a company.
And [chuckles] but [chuckles] you know, because -
>> Well in fact there are -
>> Because you know I really believe in it.
And so -
>> In fact there are companies, like 23 and Me, that started it.
>> Yeah, but they're not focusing on drug metabolism.
And drug metabolism is just unbelievably important.
Because I don't know even the range of drugs which, you know,
and who metabolizes, I don't know of any place I could get
that information in a simple form.
And I think all we really need is one really motivated person in need
of money who [laughter] just sees a sure fire way
of upgrading his car [laughter] and so uh -
>> Thank you, I've got to ask Dr. Greider,
how do you think genetic testing and genome sequencing is going
to revolutionize medicine?
>> [ Inaudible ]
>> Yeah, it has, and what Jim was just talking about is exactly right.
It's what we would call individualized medicine.
Some people call it personal medicine,
but personal to me is my diary,
whereas individual is how I'm treated by my doctor,
so I like to think of it as individualized medicine,
and I think that there is both translational components
of that now, where one can take the information that's there, and try
and direct people to, you know, certain drugs,
or not drugs, or other things.
But there's still a lot of basic science that needs to go on.
There's large amounts of data that can be collected, and to try
and understand how particular diseases are associated,
or particular drug reactions are associated,
in different populations.
Of course there are issues surrounding that, about privacy
and those kinds of things.
But I think it really is a very important revolution
that is changing how medicine will be done.
>> You know, I'd like to - every time I hear this word privacy,
it makes me so mad that all it is, is a device [chuckles]
to keep people from finding out what should be done -
>> Well sometimes there are family members -
>> Generally brought about by left-wing agitators.
>> No, sometimes there are family members.
Maybe family members that don't want to know something.
>> There is this thing, but it's really overrated,
in the sense you could spend all your money locking
up DNA records, or you know -
>> There are ways to do it that don't lock up records,
and I do think that there are some considerations of the family members
that might not want to know, risk to some disease, those sorts of things.
>> Whenever I think about it, the worst thing I did
when I started the genome program was
to start this ethics group [laughter] it was just, you know,
it sounds good, but if you put it into practice -
>> We're glad you did it.
>> Gigantic waste of money, and with very little benefit to anyone.
So I think people should just ask yourselves, what have we gained
by all this talking about privacy?
And uh [chuckles] you know -
>> Well there are important [inaudible]
>> We all know if the government wants to know your DNA sequence,
they're going to find it out [laughter].
You know? There's no way that you can prevent them,
but I just think you know, privacy is all well of moral people,
I think we're just looking at the wrong thing most of the time,
delaying something for six months because you have to have some group
of half-brained people
with no particular expertise in the subject -
>> [ Multiple Speakers ]
>> Come together and make a decision, I'm just saying,
how much of your money in Georgetown is wasted over privacy issues?
>> [Laughter] I would hate to venture [inaudible]
>> [ Multiple Speakers ]
>> I couldn't answer that, I'll just put it that way,
because I really wouldn't know.
>> No, but I'm just saying that it sounds good, but I've heard it now
for so many years, that you know, my DNA is out there for anyone to see,
and uh, on the whole, I think I've benefited
by being free rather than locked up, and so -
>> I think a lot of this has to do with educational components as well,
in terms of educating the public about what these kinds
of things mean, and educating the people
that are giving the information in terms of, you know,
really giving information that is useful information.
Because you can actually do harm to people by giving up misinformation,
if we don't really know exactly what particular alleles do,
and so some amount of contemplation of these things -
>> And to that, it's also education of the physicians.
>> Okay, let's talk about education of the physician,
and bringing together the scientists, because I think -
>> I think the explosion of information that was mentioned,
you know, the genomics, proteomics, the metabolomics,
there's so much information that's coming out there now,
and the patient will be, just become more and more available,
they'll be approaching their physician and have this information.
The physician has to know what to do with that.
And so it's, this is an aspect again of then that kind of two-way street
of translational medicine, because then most diseases are not a single,
based on a single gene or a single protein, they're aberrant pathways,
and so the physicians, we're going to have to be trained now
to understanding the underlying pathways and how to mine
that data and understand.
>> That would be impossible to train them,
you have to have a medical specialty,
in which the DNA sequence goes into someone, who then reports
to the average GP - I just think it's going to be so complicated,
that I wouldn't want to overwhelm my ordinary doctor,
and I have a good doctor, but he couldn't -
>> It would not be instantaneous to have this type of training.
This will take clearly a period of time.
>> No, it never can happen -
>> Maybe Dr. Crooke, could talk more about the education that you have
in place at Georgetown for training the scientists
and physicians of tomorrow?
>> I'm just saying I think it has to be a specialty
because of its difficulty, you shouldn't think that, you know,
given enough time, and years in grammar school you're going
to achieve it, it won't work!
They're overwhelmed with information and, you know, how to handle it.
>> I would say that they don't, you know, we all pull out a cell phone.
And we know how to use the cell phone.
I could not build a cell phone,
I couldn't tell you the underlying principles
of how the touch pad works and stuff, so they might not have
to be the expert in how to handle this data,
but at least understand the underlying principles.
>> I don't think it -
>> Well let's move on a little bit.
>> It would be very complicated,
and you just don't realize the complexity
of what we're getting into.
>> That certainly is incredibly complex.
>> It is very complex, there's a huge amount of data.
>> And so let's move back to the topic of translational medicine,
how are we going to speed it up?
Carol? How are we going to speed up the translational
of all these great discoveries into new treatments?
>> I think that it gets back to what I was saying before,
it's really the interplay between basic science
and translational medicine.
You can't, on its own, just speed up translational medicine.
You have to have people talking to each other, and new ideas come
from people in slightly different approaches
to things coming together, to talk.
So I think that that's what's going
to be really important is getting together the people
that have the idea about how to apply a particular disease approach
with the people that really are doing the basic science,
and that moving forward together will be the way to,
to move more quickly.
>> And Dr. Crooke, how can we bring the clinicians
and the basic sciences, under applied scientists, together?
>> Some of this is just building of ensemble or team science,
um...given you know some of it is how does the research get funded?
And so that can open up a whole other area of discussion,
but you know, are there mechanisms that help facilitate
that type of ensemble science?
You know, I think there's probably some great ideas out there
that aren't able to get off the ground just because we haven't
yet found the best way to get them paired
up together and moving forward.
>> And I think I'd like to take some questions from the audience.
I'm sure there are many questions for our panelists,
so I'm going to open up the floor.
Please go ahead, and perhaps can you introduce yourself?
Stand up and introduce yourself?
>> Sharon Jackson, actually the Department of State.
I'm interested in how you would describe the state of the art,
understanding the processes that you might be able to figure out better
in an experimental setting versus a clinical setting?
>> I mean computational biology is really, I mean exploding.
I mean these kinds of really, bringing in people
who know the informatics and new ways to move forward
and analyze the DNA is going to be absolutely essential.
From what we know about the very complex interactions in genetics,
that we need to find ways to be able
to bring those together, to understand disease.
So I think that is a cutting edge area, right now,
in terms of computation and bringing together,
for instance, the students.
There's a number across the country, you know,
computational biology programs that are starting
up to bring those computationally minded students together
with the biologists, so they understand both sides,
and that will be the key, given all this information that is out there.
The amount of information that we can now gather is greater
than the amount, our ability to really understand it quickly.
>> Okay. Yeah, not only analyze it, but even to visualize it.
When you start building these networks,
and so much of what we have is then two-dimensional, but it's,
how can you best capture the integration of this vast wealth
of data is, you know, one of the things, it's a section
of computational biology that's going
to be very important, to keep moving forward.
>> And Dr. Watson?
Did you want to add to that?
>> We started sort of depart from quantitative biology
at the lab, it's not that easy.
You're generally hiring people who are trained in physics
or maybe math, and they don't really, you know,
once they get a faculty position, necessarily have any feeling
for what's an important problem, and you know, putting students
on really relevant things.
So -
>> So that's the idea, of bringing - you know,
the computational scientists together with the biologists.
Sort of work together.
>> I just think, somehow we have to make or raise the mathematical level
of biologists, I don't think we can count on people trained in physics.
>> Getting them early, I think helps.
You know, I have a student in my lab who is at the homewood campus
of Johns Hopkins and he's an applied math, really really bright guy,
and he came on to do a project in my lab,
and so he's learned the biology.
He already has the math as an undergraduate,
so now learning the biology, and those are the people
who will then be able to go out, and he wants to continue in his area
of applied math and yet do it in biology.
>> Whether you, you know if we look ahead and try
and predict what it's going to be, the person who wanted
to be a you know a physicist and so he arrived at the university,
or a mathematician, and then suddenly was whoever,
or whether we're going to have to get people
who could have been physicists, become biologists earlier
in their lives, and so really have a deeper feeling for what's important
in biology, and I think we just have to get brighter people to go
into biology [laughter] and because [laughter] no, well what, you know,
the problem was you didn't have to be very bright, you know,
to describe a new species, but the level of knowledge -
>> I think we all agree we've got to get more
of the young people more interested in science, period, right?
>> No, we've got to get more of the bright people interested
in biology [laughter, applause].
You know, and -
>> Train them more, computationally.
>> I don't think you can train bright people, they exist
and you can use them, but it's very hard to you know, it's easy to say
but it's - I just think there's a lot of people who, you know,
very early in life, see you know you can do mathematics at home
and all that, it's easier to do,
whereas biology, you introduce later.
I just think we have to - the problem I see, because I'm trying
to think it through, you know
where we did the [inaudible] genome project,
we all expected 100,000 genes, okay?
And then this surprise, then find to our relief it's only 20,000.
Okay? 21,000.
But [chuckles] 21,000 is a very big number, if you look at you know,
how many characters are there in integers by chemistry?
And how many of those really can you keep in your head?
And so metabolism is really turning out to be not five,
not fifty molecules to give you a fatty acid, in some sense,
it's turning out to be more like 800.
And no one has 800 friends [chuckles] and so,
but when you're a scientist, the things you deal with,
in a sense your friends, the things you've got to manipulate,
keep in your head, try out and make sense of.
And the number is dauntingly high, you know, we now have 500 genes,
at least, implicated in the different forms of mental illness.
And putting that together in a network is just very hard,
and I don't know the answer, but I'm afraid that if you're going to deal
with the true complexity, you can't hand it over to someone else,
you've got to just decide I'm giving up any interest in baseball
and I'm focusing all my memory on this issue if I'm going to succeed.
I don't know the answer.
>> Thank you, Dr. Watson.
Let's take some more questions from the audience.
Stand up and introduce yourself?
>> I'm Neil Lohan, I'm a practicing internist,
and have been for 40 years,
and I find your comments terribly exciting,
and I think of all the catastrophic events
that could have been potentially avoided,
with insight into genetic make-up of my patients.
My question is, is the energy that's going to go forth
between the basic scientist and the practicing clinician,
is that getting organized to a functional level?
How is this information being processed for pragmatic utilization?
>> So for the training there, I would say there is an association
of groups that are now starting at least a coalition,
coming together both in Europe, the States, other countries as well,
I think the first goal is to get out there
and even have folks start learning the vernacular.
And so this gets us the idea that will the, you know,
today the standard clinician might not pick this up quickly,
but do we move folks through, through younger generations,
do we take a subset that maybe has the strong quantitative skills,
they'll be picking up the biology and their clinical skills,
and then also picking up the underlying aspects of,
to allow for this individualized medicine, to grow,
and I think it will be, it's an evolution over time, 15-20 years,
that hopefully soon you can actually start having this become part
of the curriculum for all folks going through medical school.
So you know, when we were trying this now, as we're setting
up a very focused dual degree program, to have some folks
that are selected that have the strong quantitative background
and are into this, the idea that we've got
to start getting folks trained earlier and earlier
in the quantitative sciences, I think will be important.
So you know, it's going to take a period of time,
but there is now some communication going on of groups around the world,
trying to develop, trying to come up with some kind
of what would be the standards?
How would we assess this?
How would we move forward?
>> Okay, more questions?
>> My name is Pierre Cartier, I am a practicing dentist.
In addition, I am a Masters of Public Health Student
at the George Washington University.
In recent years, or recent months, we've had the issue of lack
of funding for science due to the government shut-down
and various fiscal failures, and that's something
of a very discouraging set of values to the science community right now.
I'm interested in doing research in my career, but a lot of people
in the profession are discouraging me from doing that until,
I know the opportunities are limited, and I was wondering,
what kind of concerns do you have about encouraging younger people,
or even people like me that have done the clinical work and want
to begin going into science, what kind of concerns do you have
for getting us engaged in this current environment?
>> Yeah, this is something that I worry about all of the time,
and it kind of gets back to the thing that Jim was talking about,
is getting really bright people to come into the field.
And what we're doing right now,
is we are really discouraging young scientists.
It is extremely difficult
in this current environment, to get a research grant.
I was on a panel last week or two weeks ago at the National Press Club
at the American Society for Cell Biology, and we had a number
of speakers there, talking about this issue.
About the current age at getting a first R01 grant,
which is an individual research grant.
And it has gone up to now, I think 44 or 46 years old.
Which, you know, is just remarkable.
I mean, when I was doing my work on the discovery of telomerase,
my first grant, I was able to get my first grant, and at that time,
I think the percentile was around in the 30s,
the 30th percentile it was funded, and now it's less than 11
at some institutes, so I probably wouldn't have gotten that grant.
And this is discouraging young people from going into science.
And so if we want to bring those brightest minds in,
and do that translational component, we really have to find a way
to support the young scientist, because that's what's going
to bring the new, the new ideas in.
And so you know, if there is some way to be able to get more support
for that kind of science, that's really going to be the only way,
and these people starting out are what's going
to do the translational medicine of the future.
>> That's, it's the pipeline for the next generation, and exactly,
folks are getting discouraged.
So not only is it unfortunately discouraging for folks to get
into that who should be getting into it and have the ability to do well
if they're into it, we're also losing some good science.
These grants are peer reviewed, you sit on panels,
and you see some very good science that's just not able to be funded.
And you wonder, it's - it doesn't take very long
for a productive research program to wind down due to lack of funding,
and to get something up and going is taking a long time.
And so it's a tough situation we're facing.
>> And how can we get the government more interested in science
and in funding science, and explain to them the importance [laughter]
of science - drives innovation.
>> Well it's not just innovation,
but it is an economic driver as well.
If you read some of these reports about the innovation in the U.S.,
and the amount of the dollars that that brought into the economy,
it's not just about being able
to keep the cutting edge, it's an economic driver.
The amount of money that went into the human genome project
from the government side, there was that 100-fold return on that
in terms of the companies that were started
and all of the other spin-offs.
And so there's actually a reason to do it, from an economic standpoint,
not just from those of us that are doing the science.
>> Huge economic engine for where the economy, of the advances
that can be, that when someone is starting off,
they're just looking perhaps not even at translational,
but just some fundamental question that it's very hard
to predict what the implications could be downstream,
but they could be very profound scientifically and economically.
>> Do we need a space race, sort of moon shot
for translational medicine?
Or for scientific research in general?
Some big project that's going to unite everyone
and get everyone excited and -
>> I think that where all the fundamental discoveries have really
come from is from individuals following their curiosity,
and then those discoveries, those, you know, individual nuggets
of information are what are then translated.
I think a lot of funds have gone into, you know,
a particular focused area, you know, for instance what I work on,
you know, people who have been studying pulmonary fibrosis,
we're never thinking about telomeres.
And so any money that would go
into funding pulmonary fibrosis would have nothing to do with,
you know, the fundamental underlying cell biology issues.
So just targeting particular areas isn't necessarily
where the breakthroughs in those areas will come from.
So I certainly don't think that we need any, you know, big,
over-arching, new approach, but we need to understand that in general,
young scientists need to be supported to be able to -
you don't know where those discoveries are going
to come from, and they will come.
>> Are there, I'm surprised, Dr. Watson, you're being -
I know you're passionate about this [laughs].
>> Dr. Watson, do you have any thoughts?
On a space race for science?
>> I think the real problem is not lack of money but lack of brains.
That's my own - it's a, you know, not popular opinion.
I don't think if we doubled the money
for cancer research we'll get a cure twice as fast.
I think it's just eating into the system of inefficiency,
and that you know, I don't know the answer,
but full-blown democracy doesn't really work
with the elitism of science.
And you know, if you took the $30 billion dollar NIH budget,
I suspect you could cut out ten million
and just be totally going nowhere.
>> But yet there are examples -
>> No, there are, but I'm trying to say -
>> [Inaudible] for cancer
>> I'm trying to say many, you know, hard business world,
unless you produce a result, you essentially wither away,
and we're very protective in science, of trying to keep everyone
in the game, but then it's reducing the amount per person,
and I don't know -
>> [ Inaudible interjection ]
>> It's getting the young people into the - that's a big issue -
>> No, no, but I do think that the scientific community has
to realize one thing, that we'd probably be getting a lot more money
if we had cured cancer.
There's a lot of cynicism over the rise of the number of people dying
from cancer in the United States today - is exactly the same
that died when Nixon declared war on cancer.
We've made progress in some, but in others, not at all.
And -
>> But survival and quality of life have increased for cancer patients.
>> All we've done is create a giant industry
of not very well treating people with cancer,
and it's a drain on our country.
Now that, as you know, you could - an unpopular viewpoint,
and why I haven't been invited back
to Washington for 15 years [laughter].
They don't want to be -
>> Is that where we are now?
>> No.
>> Here we are!
>> No, it's true.
But you know, [inaudible] showed this slide,
it was pretty devastating, you know, and diabetes is coming up,
it's now one-third of cancer, and it's going up fast.
I think we - you know if we want our profession to survive,
we've got to succeed a lot more in translational things
which directly impact the company and, you know,
a group of pure scientists, we're pretty awkward, we're not, you know,
we're not very loveable because of our focus on what we're doing.
And so all they can see us is by our results.
And so -
>> Let's take some more.
>> Well, but what I'm trying to educate that some
of the things are hard, but you know, I, you know,
decided to save the culture at Harbor Lab because of going
into cancer research, because I thought there was money for it.
Now it's [inaudible], but I think we've got
to ask what does the country need to be done
as fast as possible, and do it.
Rather than trying to maintain our society, we never ask that question.
We just sort of assume that God is going to continue to give us money.
I don't think it's going to happen.
>> Well it doesn't seem like it at the moment, with the sequester,
but we have another question.
>> Hi, my name is [inaudible], I'm former graduate
of Georgetown University in Biomedical Science,
Policy and Advocacy Program.
It's a program that basically tells us how to lobby for scientists.
That scientists are not vocal enough, they stay in their labs,
do their research, but they don't go out to members of Congress
or agencies to advocate for themselves.
Is this, you think, one reason that science funding is declining?
That we're just not being vocal enough, like defense contractors
or medical device companies, or drug companies?
>> I think that there is a fair amount of advocacy.
As I mentioned, I was on a panel
with the American Society for Cell Biology.
There are a number of societies that do go out and advocate.
You're right, the general scientists
in their laboratory sometimes doesn't know what specifically
that they can do to advocate, and so that's why working
through these societies, there are channels to be able
to use your efforts to make people aware and educate the public,
and they also encourage people just to talk to their neighbors
about what they're doing, and talk to, you know,
the people that they meet at parties and things, just to talk more
about what they do about science,
just so that people understand what it's about.
>> I think you're asking too much of the ordinary person.
I think the only thing they can understand is the soft [inaudible].
It's just my own thing, you know [chuckles] and we have
to produce the equivalent of other soft [inaudible],
soon if we're going to be viable.
>> Okay, there was another hand up, right at the back there.
>> Hi, I'm Andrea [inaudible] and I'm
with the U.S. Department of Education.
And I'm working some stem programs.
Would the panelists, up there, would you agree
that it takes an incredible amount of patience to get results,
and that no matter how brainy you are, I mean, whatever it is,
nature and God and chemistry and biochemistry and physics,
the way they interact, you can only get results so fast.
Not everything can be a catalyst.
>> Yes, this depends, of course, on the field.
Different fields are different.
If you're talking about experimental biology, where you have to go in
and set up a particular research experiment, that can take longer
than if you were handed data
and you had a computational problem to solve.
So there is a wide variety of different kinds of training,
but I do think that there is a lot of training for people
in those stem education, where you can go into laboratories,
many laboratories at Johns Hopkins have high school students
or undergraduate students who will come in
and do projects for a whole year.
And that's the kind of training, they come three or four days a week
and they can get projects done, and that's how we try
and excite the young people about what it is to do discovery.
Because that's what will bring people into science,
is to get that spark of finding
out something new that nobody else knows.
And that's just so exciting.
And so if it takes a little bit of time, there are programs
that allow students to really experience that,
and I think that's what will draw them in.
>> Right, and it's a passion, I mean,
you might have high school student or an undergrad,
maybe you're giving some lecture-based course,
and they sometimes, they'll come and say "that was really fascinating,"
and they don't maybe stop and realize that in
that 50 minute lecture, how many hours, and days,
and years of work went into that.
But then they get into lab, but it's a different thing.
It's exactly what Carol said.
You're seeing something for the very first time.
So I think, yes, there has to be persistence,
and there has to be the underlying passion to want to do that.
And it's incumbent upon us to kind of ignite that, you know, spark,
so that they have that passion.
They see and they experience it, and they want to keep pursuing it.
>> Okay and gentleman at the back?
>> Hello, my name is Tino Dye [assumed spelling],
I work at the Library of Congress.
Is there any kind of professional/amateur cooperation
that is going on, you know, so that even though, you know I don't have,
you know the biological training or the medical training,
I can still pursue these things, even though I work
at the Library of Congress.
>> Well I know of some examples
where people basically crowd source problem solving,
so there are some problems, for instance, I'm thinking of a group
that do protein folding and what they do is they put out on the web,
they say, you know, here are some little problems.
And they have a lot of people work on the little components,
and people just do it on the side,
and by then basically crowd sourcing the information,
they can sometimes solve problems that way by having, you know,
a bunch of people that are just curious put their mind to it.
So there are those kinds of programs that are out there.
>> And so my actually my question is, is there a thrust in, you know,
like for instance, this gentleman is from Georgetown, is there a thrust
to actually, to actually have this be more widespread rather
than a one-shot, one-shot crowd sourcing type of effort?
>> I mean like I would think like not just unique to Georgetown,
one of the other things that's out there is the whole idea of mooks,
and do you start putting out these very large, you know,
out to the world type of ways of getting information out,
have folks participate as they want to see fit,
and that's such a new field, it would be very interesting to see
where that ends up, you know, it's something that -
>> [ Inaudible Comment ]
>> Yeah, or multi, uh, massive online or -
>> Open course.
>> Open course.
>> Open course, yeah, okay so it's -
>> The online learning -
>> Online learning.
It's the idea that you just put it out there for no fee,
basically for anyone, to learn, some folks are trying to say "Do you want
to do it," you know, as a course, at least to a degree or not,
it's still very nascent in how different groups are doing it,
there's most institutions across the country are now starting
to develop mooks and put them out there and it will -
I think that might - it will be interesting to see over time
where that leads, for some of the things that you're asking as well.
>> Okay we have a few minutes left, so any last questions?
Gentleman at the back here.
>> My name is Mohammed [inaudible], I'm an [inaudible] professor.
I share some of the sentiments that Dr. Watson has expressed,
and I think I can tell you where you can find those bright people,
that will do the research.
They're in my department [laughter].
I think the physics department, they do research, just pure research.
They don't care about applications, I think, you know,
I think you should be talking to them.
I think you should talk to the [inaudible] in the math department,
and peer research that I do.
Peer research, and what's really the height of my team,
I know you're trained, you think correctly,
you don't care about applications.
Everything is purely abstract.
That's where you get your guys, your bright guys.
I think this is what needs to be recruited,
to get involved in applied research.
So. There you go [laughter].
>> I didn't get the message?
>> I think the gentleman was indicating it,
where you can get the brightest minds.
From, I believe, from mathematics department?
>> Mathematic department.
>> And MIT.
>> [Laughter] Mathematics department.
>> Mathematics departments at universities [laughter].
>> Because I'm not, that's where you have the very bright guys,
right now just on pure research, without any,
they don't do anything applied.
In fact, people who do applied are looked down on,
if you have applied mathematics,
and [inaudible] extremely critical, abstract stuff.
But I wasn't [inaudible], I do applications.
I do [inaudible], I do [inaudible] physics.
I do apply my research in that.
But most mathematicians, they're just pure research,
and they don't care about applications.
But that's where the bright guys are, they're the ones
who really are very bright -
>> You said the bright guys, and girls,
are in the mathematics departments.
>> What I'm trying to get across is I think some
of our brightest minds should be now more focusing
on major translational problems which our country has to solve
in order to stay solvent, and harmonious, and we -
there seems to be no sense of duty in the community
that they actually have to worry about what's,
the country needs to be solved.
There's not the slightest war-time atmosphere in our country.
And yet we have you know, overwhelmed by dementia.
The largest single cause of personal bankruptcy is taking care
of Alzheimer's parents.
>> The U.S. has just announced a big Alzheimer's initiative to try
and put more money into -
>> I haven't seen it.
Money is not the solution.
It's bright people.
And Alzheimer's field has not been dominated by bright people.
Neurologists.
Come on!
>> Money can help bring bright people into a field.
>> I would agree with that.
>> These traditional fields have been ones where you do not have
to be complicated science, and suddenly they're faced with,
you know, sure you give a Neurology Department all the money
for Alzheimer's.
No! And uh -
>> But it's not just neurologists, it's all the people working
on basic neuro-degenerative research -
>> Yeah, but the - look.
They're not the same quality of the people who built the atomic bomb.
That's all I'm trying to say.
And I think our country has to face
up to how difficult these problems are.
>> I think you do this through translational use,
or bringing together - that's what I'm saying.
>> [ Multiple Speaking ]
>> Sense of where people that, you know,
they can spend all their time being clever chemists, but maybe,
they're really going to have to get into a field.
The Alzheimer's field - no progress in ten years.
>> It's also an enormously complex disease.
>> I know, but you know, how many personal bankruptcies, you know,
these are just awful things, you know, of -
>> I think we'd all agree it's a horrible disease.
>> And so I'm just saying, I submitted my first paper
in translational medicine, today.
Yesterday.
And -
>> Did you send it to Science Translational Medicine?
>> No, no [laughter].
No, I want it to have an impact [laughter].
>> We're a brand-new Journal, we have good [inaudible]!
>> [ Multiple Speaking ]
>> You sent it to the wrong, sir, okay.
>> No, all I'm trying to say is it's in diabetes,
I wanted it read by people in the field.
I have [inaudible] read it, he's helped,
because you know it's my expertise, but you know,
it could be the second most important paper I've ever published.
>> We should look out for it, and I look forward to reading it.
>> Yeah, but in any case, you know, it's partly my age, you know,
I don't want to - I want to go on until 90,
I don't want to get Alzheimer's.
And so I have a sense of urgency,
but I think even younger people have got to just look at the statistics,
and where the money is being consumed, and it's consuming,
it's taking money away from our science, you know?
Everyone is being besieged by these unpleasant medical costs.
And we shouldn't, you know, we could be much -
Tip O'Neill could be a much nicer, you know, to get along 20 years ago,
but he didn't have the budget problems that we have today.
>> Well I think we'd all agree with that.
Last, final comments from our other panelists?
Dr. Greider?
>> Yeah, I just think that the main point
about getting young people excited about making discovery is
where a lot of the new things will come from,
and translational medicine comes directly on top
of those fundamental discoveries, and so, you know,
encouraging the young people and making the field palatable is really
where the change is going to come.
>> And Dr. -
>> Yeah, I can just add to that, I think, in translational sciences,
these devastating diseases that Jim's mentioning, Alzheimer's,
obesity, I mean, there will be applications for this,
as we get the young folks into this, and start working
on addressing these problems from the basic to the clinic, I think,
you know, hopefully will have some impact.
>> I think it's a big hole which could be filled.
>> I would agree with that, a big hole that needs to be filled.
And I think on that note, we're going to close the panel.
I'm going to thank our wonderful three panelists [applause]
and the audience.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.