Who should pay for scientific curiosity?

Q:Whose responsibility should it be to fund basic medical research?

I think the answer is government, but not everyone agrees. I gave a talk to a Rotary Club on the benefits of basic medical research in which I lamented the fact that the Bush administration was shortchanging medical research funding at U.S. universities. An audience member challenged my premise and asked, "Isn't the job of funding medical research a responsibility of the pharmaceutical industry and, if so, why should government do it?"

So what did you answer him?

Truth is, industry does not have the freedom or the capacity to fund the enormous amount of pure discovery research that is essential to improving our health and welfare. Companies are driven by shareholders, a bottom line, time constraints and clear priorities for generating products and maximizing their return on investment. No company has the freedom to support the process of creating new knowledge that often leads to transformative advances.

And universities do?

Basically, yes. Major advances in understanding the secrets of nature arise from the curiosity of scientists, pursuing fundamental problems that interest them.

Any kind of "wow" examples of what academic curiosity has wrought?

Lots. James Watson and Francis Crick, working in a government-funded laboratory and trying to resolve the chemical nature of DNA, unexpectedly uncovered the mechanism in which a gene could be mutated and how that mutation would faithfully reproduce itself in future generations. And new drugs to treat everything from infections to cancer to erectile dysfunction were discovered by researchers working in fields unrelated to these products.

And what's the meaning of this to governments in Canada?

They should recognize that investing in basic discovery research leads to new knowledge, products, industries and companies and, ultimately, to a new tax revenue stream. The return on basic investment is a series of ups: an improved standard of living, the creation of well-paying jobs, centres of excellence for training the next generation of scientists. Such investment also ratchets up our international competitiveness and our ability to attract highly qualified personnel.

Is that quantifiable?

A recent study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reports that the annual return on investment for publicly funded academic research is 28 per cent in general and 30 per cent for research that leads to pharmaceutical products.

So where do Ontario and Canada stand in terms of the debate over government support of basic research?

They have been on a series of funding ups over the last decade. The Canada Foundation for Innovation has confirmed $4.5 billion to strengthen the infrastructure of Canadian universities, colleges, research institutions and hospitals. Because their funding model is that their contribution should only be 40 per cent of the total costs of new infrastructure, this will be leveraged into $7.85 billion through contributions from private and provincial organizations. Then there is the Canada Research Chairs Program which commits $300 million annually for the support of 2,000 research professors in Canadian universities.

So Canada has got it right and the Americans have got it wrong?

Maybe it's fairer to say Canada has got it "righter," at least recently. In addition to providing infrastructure money to organizations that support research, government needs to provide research funding directly to scientists to run their labs. Neither Canada nor the United States under Bush has provided adequate funds for individual scientists, which in the end blunts the effects of even the most generous infrastructure programs.

You are not saying industry should not be present in the mix?

Absolutely not. Ideally, for-profit companies and not-for-profit organizations should partner to create and bring to market the products we need to improve the health and welfare of our citizens. Neither can do it alone. You don't get the research formula right one decade and then take a funding break in the next. Government support of basic university research needs to be "righter" from now until forever.