Perspectives and Conclusions

Abstract

PERSPECTIVES AND CONCLUSIONS GAETANO SALVATORE* HOWARD K. SCHACHMAN,t AND PETER G. CONDLIFFEt The papers presented in this issue of Perspectives are the record of a Fogarty International Center Conference on "The Role and Significance of International Cooperation in the Biomedical Sciences," which took place in September 1983 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. The conference was attended by 215 foreign scientists and science policymakers from 18 countries. In addition the meeting drew many more research workers from the NIH campus and from other U.S. institutions across the country. * * * The first and major theme of the conference was to review, with the testimony of outstanding scientists, the ways in which interaction among research workers from different nations have influenced the flow of ideas and the path of thinking in several fields of biology and medicine. Leading researchers in biochemistry and protein chemistry, in genetics and molecular biology, in immunology and endocrinology, have shown how individual interactions at the international level have provided crucial contributions to the advancement of these fields. The effects of the international experience on the scientific areas in which talented individuals have worked were also examined. Other conferences have tried to examine the statistics about international exchange, and occasional articles have appeared on the value of transcultural experience in science. However, few of these meetings or the ensuing publications have focused on the importance of the international experience of individual scientists for their subsequent careers or on the long-term consequences of substantial periods spent by research workers in laboratories outside their native countries. Very often the most fruitful interactions between biomedical scientists have occurred in the unique intellectual environment provided by institutions such as the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, the Pasteur Insti- *Centro Di Endocrinologia Oncologia Sperimentale Del CNR, c/o 2d Faculty of Medicine, University of Naples, Naples, Italy. tDepartment of Molecular Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California. ^Scholars Branch, Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20205.© 1986 by The University of Chicago. AU rights reserved. 0031-5982/86/2932/$01.00 S222 I G. Salvatore, H. K. Schachman, and P. G. Condliffe ¦ Conclusions tute in Paris, the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, and the Medicai Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. For instance, a particularly striking view is the account by Joan Steitz of the impact of young Americans on the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the 1960s and, conversely, the effect of the British laboratory on their subsequent careers back home, where, without exception, they have continued to make major contributions in biomedical research. No student of protein chemistry, as Christian B. Anfinsen has pointed out, could imagine what his field of interest would be without the impact of the Carlsberg Laboratory in the 1950s and the 1960s. The same holds true also for biochemistry and for genetics, for immunology as well as for endocrinology. Evidence from a wide variety of fields of biomedical research presented at the conference demonstrates that collaboration and direct interaction among scientists and among laboratories and research institutions have been essential to the present advances in biology and medicine. It was the hope of the organizers that the lectures here published would illuminate this point and capture the intellectual excitement ofthe very formative years spent abroad for the careers and subsequent scientific accomplishments of a number of scientists. Another aim of the conference was to assess the present role and the actual effectiveness of the various mechanisms that are useful for international scientific cooperation. The following four areas received special attention. 1. Mobility ofscientists.—Creativity in science, as in other fields, rests on skilled, talented people. The physical movement of such people across national boundaries has been an essential ingredient of creative periods in science. The dynamic burst of biomedical science after World War II has been characterized by a period of exceptional interchange of scientists . Since the mid-1970s severe constraints have reduced the number of long-term exchanges between the United States and Western Europe; this is particularly evident in the reduction of the number of U.S. scientists crossing the Atlantic tojoin European laboratories and of European researchers seeking long-term collaboration with their...