Abstract

Over the centuries there has been continuous disagreement about the relative roles of the contributions of the laboratory sciences compared with careful observation at the bedside for the improvement of medical care. More recently, the two fields have become less divided and after the success of the human genome project it was claimed that within 20 years medical practice would become personalised and that many of our major killers would be controlled. Partly because this was found to be an over-optimistic prediction and for reasons that are still not clear there have been recent attacks on the value of basic medical research and claims that it has had very little effect on the improvement of health care. In this lecture the case will be made that these recent criticisms of the role of the basic sciences in medical research are completely erroneous and how a better balance between the basic and clinical aspects of research in the future can be integrated towards the production of higher standards of clinical practice, not just for richer countries but for improving the health of the populations of the developing world.