This is a wonderful personal moment because, as a National Institutes of Health director, I testified before Congress on this issue, where
it became quite clear that this research could only be carried out in the private sector. It was wonderful, therefore, to come to a university where there was
a president who would support these kinds of efforts and to find scientists who really had the capacity to do this work. These are critically important
problems in biology, deep intellectual problems, and of course, they have enormous implications for human health, especially for our children. Through this
stem cell center we must not only succeed in our current scientific endeavors, but also find a way to assure the brightest young scientists, if they want to
choose this as an area of focus, that there will be support for them and avenues for them to perform important research that will have an impact on human health.
Science has been fragmented, and the model of doing science has been the lone investigator in his or her laboratory. It's clear, however,
that to make rapid and serious progress on understanding stem cells and understanding how to differentiate them, translating that basic progress into
medically useful interventions, and testing those interventions, requires a large team of people working together. There is a new spirit nationally, and
especially at Harvard, that is allowing us to bring investigators together in this area and in many other areas of the life sciences.
|
|