Biomedicine in Singapore: #1.
I know this is a somewhat old topic, but I guess a review is somewhat necessary. It helps me synthesise what I know and puts things into clearer perspective.When I was first enticed into this business I was told that Singapore is making biomedicine into the fourth pillar of the economy, developed to eventually serve as a replacement for manufacturing which is projected to decline in the years to come. Thus, at the time when we were getting out of JC, students were given the idea that biomedicine has a lot of prospects and thus many of them flocked into the field.
At the same time, A*STAR was set up, infrastructure was being built, and a huge amount of money was set aside to fund biomedical research of all forms. Also, a large number of scholars are being funded and sent overseas to be trained as researchers.
Criticisms came from all directions. Singaporeans are concerned as to whether the money dumped into research will indeed actually generate economic returns and translates into jobs for Singaporeans. People like me are worried that the whole research enterprise might be too commercial and there might be problems getting funding for projects that are difficult to be translated into commercial use.
Let's see.
It is almost beyond question that Singapore's biomedical initiative is economically driven. What the government hopes is that biomedicine will eventually become one of the driving forces of our economy. This field is indeed picking up - although its overall GDP contribution is still less than 5%, there are signs that companies are taking us seriously - BioRad, Pfizer and GSK being some significant examples.
The research sector seems less certain. Indeed, where are all our money going to? Can such spending be justified? Is the research spending going to benefit Singaporeans? Can we put our money into better use instead of throwing it into research?
It is almost beyond doubt, again, that if Singapore were to develop its biomedical industry, Singapore has to develop its own R&D capabilities. If pharmaceutical companies were to come to Singapore - even if they are only setting up manufacturing plants - they need support staff that are able to do R&D if they were to ever benefit from the sales of new products and get a headstart in occupying the niches in the relatively ignored Asian-specific diseases 'market'.
In order to ensure that these companies come to Singapore instead of going to Hong Kong or Taiwan, we have to invest in manpower with the right skill sets and the right ideas. There is a reason why biomedicine as an industry grew out of places like Cambridge MA (nope not the UK) - institutions there have produced significant amounts of professionals with the key skills, ideas and attitude, and they formed the basis of the success that was to follow. It is not realistic for companies to recruit talents they need from overseas, especially when Singapore is so far away from most places where these talents can possibly come from.
Thus, Singapore needs to produce our own talents - but Singapore cannot do this on our own. First of all, we do not have a research tradition. Since 1819 Singapore has been a trading post for the British Empire, and Singaporeans now are mostly descendants of merchants, labourers and artisans; the nature of our people is pragmatic, we want to earn as much money as we can, and we want stability. These are not characteristics of anyone who can excel in research. Furthermore, our universities do not have the right environment to groom such talents. In the field of biomedicine, our universities do not sufficiently foster intellectual curiosity and the individual's strive towards excellence, and they do not sufficiently develop confidence for independent work. These shortcomings cannot be rectified in the short term, because this is a result of our society's general characteristics and attitude.
Singapore has been trying to groom local talents in 2 ways:
1) Bring in so called 'Big Whales' such as Sydney Brenner to set directions, 'Sharks' such as Jackie Ying and Edison Liu who has experience to actually work on the ground to lead, and also people like Brigitte Lane, Nancy Jenkins etc. to actually set up labs here.
2) Send scholars like me out.
I have justified why the money allocated for biomedicine cannot all go to local universities - because, if they are lacking in certain critical aspects, money is not going to change anything. The point of contention is whether I am worth what the government pays me for, whether the whales serve their purposes, and whether or not money can be better spent on young researchers who show promise.
Whether or not I am worth my money - I will let the economists debate about this. All I will do is to do what I want to do and you will see. I have criticisms for the system but that is also old and I won't repeat it here.
The whales versus young promising researchers thing requires a little more insight. If I am a young promising researcher whom has just completed my post-doc in UCSF and I am ready to start a new lab, would I choose Singapore for a $500,000 start-up grant or a reputable institution in the US for $100,000?
Realistically, I will choose to stay in the US. Reasons: higher predictability of staff's reliability, higher availability of grants, stronger and closer professional support networks, and possibility of getting a tenure. It is a gamble either way, but going to Singapore is a bigger gamble even with a bigger start-up grant. I will not do that in any case because if I mess up any bit my career is gone - and Hopkins' departure from Singapore is not appeasing.
Only people who have nothing to lose will come to Singapore. They are either the completely useless, or those who have already made their name. The latter would be the big whales.
But how would they benefit us? They do not directly train people for sure, but these people have their networks with them and as they become more confident of Singapore and have more stakes in us they will bring the young and promising to us - at least this is what we are hoping for. And indeed this is what happens on the ground - Peter Gluckman has once told me, he knows developmental biology people in the whole of the Commonwealth, and Judith Swain knows people from the USA - and as long as I need help from them, they will be able to find the right person for me. Indeed they have. This is not limited to A*STAR - for example, we have Stephen Cohen in TLL too.
Further on I will talk about sources of funding, translation of bench work to clinical medicine, and the commercialisation of our research.
Labels: Policy and Politics
