The Promise of the Bioscience Century
America's investment in bioscience, especially through the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, accelerated for several years beginning in 1998. Today, we're reaping the return on that investment as what once seemed impossible becomes routine. Precision medicine is reducing suffering and deaths, and processes that once took years and cost millions - think sequencing the human genome - get faster and cheaper by the day. But those advances are merely a prologue. We're at the dawn of a scientific revolution that will save, extend and improve the quality of people's lives across the planet while easing the tremendous economic burden of health care. Moreover, bioscience holds promise for solving seemingly intractable global challenges related to energy, access to clean water and sustainable food production. How do we quicken this work? Who will fund it? And how can the participants in the bioscience ecosystem work together more effectively?
