Research: A Sound Investment in Effective Health Care

Abstract

A virtual revolution has occurred in the practice of medicine over the past 50 years, but in the very recent past, we have seen the development of powerful new technologies for the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Among the most spectacular advances are those accociated with imaging techniques made possible by the almost incredible leaps of understanding that have taken place in electronics, computer science, physics, molecular biology and physiology. Within the biomedical scientific enterprise itself during recent years there has been a convergence having profound implications. Nobel laureate Arthur Kornberg recently called attention to the ‘confluence of many discrete and previously unrelated medical subjects into a single unified discipline’. He observed that ‘anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, immunology and genetics have now been merged and are expressed in a common language of chemistry’.