National Academies Press: OpenBook
« Previous: Front Matter
Suggested Citation:"Welcome." National Research Council. 1998. Serving Science and Society Into the New Millenium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6325.
×

Welcome

Kenneth I. Shine

President, Institute of Medicine

Washington, D.C.

Even though biology has made enormous progress in the last portion of the 20th century, the 20th century will be known as the century of physics and astronomy. Early in the century came e = MC2 and quantum mechanics. Those concepts stimulated the application of physics to atomic energy. We believed that we could put someone on the moon, and we did it. The space program continues to excite the nation.

But the 21st century will be the century of the life sciences in all their ramifications. That includes not simply the use of molecular biology and genetics in human health, but the whole range of application of the life sciences—advances in agriculture, in animal husbandry, in cloning, in bioremediation to solve environmental problems, in the applications of biology in space, and so on. Dan Goldin, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has launched a new astrobiology program. Molecular biology might make it less expensive for the chemical industry to use organisms to generate new compounds than to produce them in large vats.

The life sciences include the behavioral sciences and the social sciences. When you consider that 50% of America's health-care bill is for illnesses that are produced by inappropriate behavior—alcohol and other substance abuse, violence, inappropriate sexual behavior—you can imagine that these are subjects in which there will also be enormous effort and that they include many related ethical issues.

The programs that we are celebrating today represent some of the very best in the transition of the life sciences to new frontiers. The next great frontier in the 21st century will not be in space, but will be the human mind—the capacity to relate to biology, emotions, behavior, thinking, and a variety of fundamental aspects of what makes intelligence. Some of the imaging programs that the Department of Energy (DOE) has supported use scanning technology to understand emotion, phantom pain, and various behavioral disorders.

We have seen a remarkable degree of reductionism in the last portion of the 20th century. We will need to begin to reintegrate what we know about genes and gene products into structure. This includes protein structure, the structure of the cell, and the structure of organs. DOE programs have included programs in structural biology that are on the cusp of this reintegration.

I hope you saw the synthesis pieces released by the Academy Complex, Preparing for the 21st Century, which contained 6 policy statements. One focused on the environment and the human future. The report says that, ''for human societies to achieve a productive, healthful, and sustainable relationship with the natural world, the public and private sectors must make environmental considerations an integral part of decision making.'' We believe that, and we believe that studies undertaken by the Board on Sustainable Development, the Board on Biology, and the Commission on Life Sciences are relevant to that charge.

Suggested Citation:"Welcome." National Research Council. 1998. Serving Science and Society Into the New Millenium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6325.
×

A major challenge for our society remains how to convey the idea of risk, not only for environmental but for medical reasons. The public understanding of risk remains fuzzy.

I am particularly pleased that the Academy Complex this summer will be hosting representatives of 11 academic health centers for a 5-day institute in which they will be joined by their colleagues from the public schools in a joint activity to apply the new science standards and to learn about hands-on teaching and how to achieve systemic change in public education. I hope you as individuals and collectively will support our efforts in K-12 education; without an educated public that understands risk, probability, and science, we will be hampered in carrying out major programs.

In the report on the environment (one of our synthesis pieces), there is an interesting discussion of the defect in the ozone layer and the work of Sherry Rowland. I mention that as a reminder that when Dr. Rowland, who received the Nobel Prize for this work, started to try to understand the events that led to the evidence of a hole in the ozone layer, he was not asking an applied question at all. He was interested in how some types of hydrocarbons are metabolized or degraded in the environment. Pursuing science—pursuing knowledge—eventually led him and his colleagues to the recognition of a problem in the atmosphere. It is in that context that the tradition of DOE—trying to support and sustain the highest-quality science, which can be translated into technologies that help all of us—makes the agency and your programs particularly important.

Congratulations on your work. I look forward to a very interesting meeting.

Suggested Citation:"Welcome." National Research Council. 1998. Serving Science and Society Into the New Millenium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6325.
×
Page 1
Suggested Citation:"Welcome." National Research Council. 1998. Serving Science and Society Into the New Millenium. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6325.
×
Page 2
Next: A Celebration of 50 Years of Health and Environmental Research »
Serving Science and Society Into the New Millenium Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $51.00 Buy Ebook | $40.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

A symposium titled "Serving Science and Society into the New Millennium: The Legacy and the Promise" was held at the National Academy of Sciences on May 21-22, 1997. Speakers and panelists discussed the accomplishments and future of DOE's Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program. They also discussed a variety of multidisciplinary research activities, such as developing advanced medical diagnostic tools and treatments for human disease; assessing the health effects of radiation; tracking the regional and global movement of energy-related pollutants, and establishing the first human genome program. At the end of the symposium, 13 scientists who have been associated with the BER program and who have made significant contributions to its advancements and progress were honored. The proceedings volume includes the presentations made at the symposium.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!