Senator HARRIS. How will they be made aware of it?

Mr. WRIGHT. Through references to biomedical affairs in existing courses and training programs, and through informal discussions with the faculties as the faculty members, themselves, become more aware of these problems.

Senator HARRIS. How will the faculty become more aware?

Mr. WRIGHT. By such activities as this Institute is undertaking. At the present time they only become aware of them through external activities, through being advisers to Government agencies or to industry, and this has very little to do with their academic responsibilities. Hopefully, through this Institute and other mechanisms, these individuals will be able to share with their colleagues and students their insights and concerns related to science affairs.

Senator HARRIS. Very well. Thank you very much, Mr. Wright, for your presentation and for your patient response to questions.

Mr. WRIGHT. Thank you, sir.

Senator HARRIS. The subcommittee will recess now until 2:30, at which time, we shall have Dr. Hudson Hoagland, who is director of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Shrewsbury, Mass., and Dr. Chauncey Starr, who is dean of engineering at the University of California, at Los Angeles.

Until 2:30, then, the subcommittee will stand in recess.

(Whereupon, at 11:20 a.m., the committee recessed, to reconvene at 2:30 p.m., the same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

Senator HARRIS. The subcommittee will be in order.

We are continuing our hearing this afternoon and our first witness will be Dr. Hudson Hoagland.

Dr. Hoagland is director of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, Shrewsbury, Mass. His Ph. D. degree, which he received in 1927, is in the field of biology.

Without objection, additional biographical data will be inserted in the record at this point.

Biographical Sketch: Dr. Hudson Hoagland

Director, Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Ph. D. 1927. Field: Biology.

Background Data: Instructor, Research Associate and Tutor at Harvard. Professor of General Physiology and Head of the Biology Department at Clark University. Affiliate Research Professor at Tufts School of Medicine and Boston University. Co-founder of Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology. Fellow: National Research Council, Harvard; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Recipient of Honorary Degrees from Colby College, Wesleyan University, Clark University, Bates College, Boston University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Recipient of Modern Medicine Award for Distinguished Achievement; Humanist of the Year Award, American Humanist Association.

Member, President, Vice President, Chairman, Director and Trustee of many Boards and Organizations.

Publications-Approximately 220 contributions to the scientific and medical field, including a monograph and chapters in various books.

Senator HARRIS. Dr. Hoagland, we may be interrupted during your testimony for a rollcall which is impending in the Senate. But I would

like to go ahead as long as we can. It could be that we can get through your entire statement.

We are very pleased that you are here, and we shall be pleased to hear your statement at this time.

TESTIMONY OF DR. HUDSON HOAGLAND, DIRECTOR, WORCESTER FOUNDATION FOR EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY, SHREWSBURY, MASS.

Dr. HOAGLAND. Senator Harris and his Subcommittee on Government Research have raised important questions in a letter to me of January 24. While I am not competent to answer some of them, I would like to discuss basic problems they raise and postpone attempts at answers until later in this discussion.

As I understand it, a general concern of this committee is the coupling advances in basic science to applied technology, and especially to medical practice. There is a discouraging time lag between fundamental discoveries in any field and their applications. Because of crowded journals it usually takes a year or more to get a paper published. Moreover, the compartmentation of science, its special jargons and the plethora of publications may delay indefinitely the impact of a basic new discovery on clinicians interested in its application. An important question is how to shorten this time in bringing the fruits of science to bear upon the treatment of patients. This problem is similar to that of translating advances in physics and chemistry into engineering and technology, and I would like to begin by considering the nature of science and the motivations of scientists.

One of the greatest discoveries ever made, and repeatedly confirmed over the last 300 years, is that if men with imagination and discipline are allowed to investigate problems that deeply excite their curiosity, they may turn up discoveries of very great social significance.

Warren Weaver, in 1953, wrote, "To the question, 'What is science?', the realistic answer, it has been said, is that science is what scientists do. . . . When pleasant temptations and unpleasant pressures divert scientists to 'practical' researches, it would be still more meaningful to declare what science ought to be is what the ablest scientists really want to do.

"This may seem at first thought a shallow, hedonistic attitude as though one were arguing that science should be merely a private entertainment for scientists. Actually, free science, the free following of curiosity, has never been trivial, selfish, or purposeless. The sober record of experience shows that the trained human mind, if you give it free play and a congenial climate, turns to deep and significant enterprises. The rational approach to life is the successful and productive approach. The most imaginative and powerful movements in the history of science have arisen not from plan, not from compulsion, but from the spontaneous enthusiasm and curiosity of capable individuals who had the freedom to think about the things they considered interesting." A major problem is to find such individuals, supply them with facilities, and leave them alone in an intellectually stimulating

environment.

The social consequences of exploring the unknown have often had profound social repercussions. Thus, Pasteur's discovery of the role of

bacteria in causing disease was a byproduct of his studies of fermentation and the souring of wines. The detailed life history of mosquitoes proved to be the keys to yellow fever and malaria. Botanists, in studying molds, turned up penicillin and opened the whole field of antibiotics, which save millions of lives annually. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the past two decades in science has been the bringing together of classical genetics with biochemistry in terms of an understanding of the molecular basis of heredity, the practical implications of which still lie in the future.

In 1905, an obscure scientist, Albert Einstein, published a paper in a technical journal, read by only a few, which revolutionized the world in terms of sub-atomic physics and nuclear energy. All of these advances, with their impacts on society, came about as byproducts of the exercise of free curiosity and this has been true of most of the really great discoveries such as those of Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry on electromagnetic induction which furnished the dynamic principles of the dynamo and electric motor and made possible the electrical power industry of today. These advances were made by men curious. about phenomena without considerations of the applications of their discoveries.

Today much of biomedical research is conducted in the form of multidisciplinary projects involving cooperation by biochemists, physiologists, pharmacologists and investigations of patients in clinics. Cooperative project research may have the advantage of shortening the timelag between basic discovery and application, although pressures from the couplings may adversely affect the brilliant individual scientist. It is hard to think of Newton, Pasteur, Darwin, or Einstein working as part of a team on a large collaborative project. However, in complex fields of medical research today a vast array of ideas and skills are necessary to deal with problems of cancer, cardiovascular disease and behavior abnormalities.

The support of biomedical science by the Federal Government seems to me to have been handled very well. The NIH study committees are made up of professional peers of the scientists requesting grants. They evaluate projects and this procedure is as good as any that I have been able to think of. In all human relations prejudices inevitably operate and their are fashions in science as in other fields of endeavor, but by and large the system of rotating study section committees is a good one. These committees have given grants to able investigators. Scientific excellence is self-catalytic so that certain institutions inevitably tend in the course of time to accummulate very able investigators. In this regard I am reminded especially of the physiology and biochemistry departments of Cambridge University, England, which house in their modest laboratories a startling number of Nobel Prize winners. I do not think that Federal research grants should be distributed on a geographical ("pork barrel") basis. I recognize, as a biologist, that genes for intelligence and abilities are probably distributed evenly throughout the country and that it is desirable to encourage science teaching and research in institutions other than centers of demonstrated excellence. However, I think that this should be done by increased appropriations of special funds and not by curtailing Federal support to those centers, since this will deteriorate the quality of our science and slow its advance, including advances in technology and bedside medicine.

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COMMUNICATION OF WORKERS IN BIOMEDICAL FIELDS

In recent years there have developed a number of professional organizations, for the most part held small in membership, that bring together people in the basic and applied fields to discuss problems of common interest. These small meetings are different from the huge meetings of the AMA and the Federated Societies for Experimental Biology. Three of these organizations, in the field of my own research interests are the American College of Neuropharmacology, the American Psychopathological Association and the Society for Biological Psychiatry. Each consists of some 100 or 200 elected members known for their research publications and representing such fields as biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, neurology, internal medicine, psychology, psychiatry, and sociology. A larger group representing interdisciplinary interests in the behavioral sciences is the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease. The meetings and publications of books and journal papers delivered at these organizations' meetings often bring communications from basic scientists to bear on clinical problems.

For some years the Josiah Macy, Jr., Foundation, under Dr. Frank Fremont-Smith, conducted a remarkable series of small conferences. These consisted of two and a half day meetings each year for 3 to 5 years of the same group of not more than 25 members chosen from a wide range of scientific and medical specialties. Topics such as metabolic interrelations, problems of aging, factors regulating blood pressure, connective tissue, the adrenal cortex, nerve impulse, problems of consciousness, neuropharmacology, problems of infancy and childhood, and cybernetics were the subjects of these conferences, each of which was published in book form together with their freewheeling discussion. This type of conference format has been continued and extended by other organizations.

The principal advantages of conferences of this kind are to produce dialogues between workers and shorten the long delay in communicating scientific findings, since face-to-face confrontation facilitates the adoption of new ideas and procedures. Such conferences tend to dissolve barriers between the basic and applied medical sciences. I believe that in the support of this type of conference more Federal funds could profitably be used.

In a conversation preparatory to this meeting, my colleague, Dr. Werner Koella, has pointed out that a most promising instrument to facilitate communication and break down artificial barriers lies in the reorganization of teaching in medical schools from the "horizontal" to the "vertical" organization. In the past medical knowledge has been organized and taught in blocks of physiology, biochemistry, internal medicine, neurology, et cetera. In an increasing number of places medical schools are shifting more and more to vertically organized teaching. For example, "neurological sciences" may be taught. This includes correlations of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neurobiochemistry, neuropharmacology, neurosurgery, neurology, and biological psychiatry. This new mode of teaching not only has the advantage of activating the students' feelings for integration of basic sciences with the clinic, but also brings the teachers together and the probability of

interchange of the "new" is very much increased. Dr. Koella believes that many medical schools are tending toward departments of neurosciences, departments of circulatory sciences, departments of respiratory sciences, et cetera, which would include the basic science laboratories, teachers, and investigators plus pathology laboratories and clinics.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF RESEARCH INSTITUTES TO INTERDISCIPLINARY ADVANCES

I would like to comment on the role of biomedical research institutes as research centers. A classic example of this, of course, is the former Rockefeller Institute, which has since become the Rockefeller University. Workers at the Rockefeller Institute made many important contributions to fundamental science and also to applied bedside medicine. Recently the American Medical Association has established an Institute of Biomedical Research in Chicago, modeled after the old Rockefeller Institute. I am informed that in 1965 there were 117 biomedical research institutes in 31 of our States, operating on 581 grants from NIH totaling from this source alone approximately $28 million. The Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology is an example. It is an entirely independent, not-for-profit research institute. Dr. Gregory Pincus and I have been its codirectors since we founded it in 1944. We now employ some 350 people, approximately 120 of whom have the M.D. or Ph. D. degree. We are currently supported by 104 grants and contracts, totaling $3.8 million and operate on a budget of about $4 million a year, of which about 65 percent is from the Federal Government. We have usually in residence some 40 post-doctoral students who are with us, for the most part, in training courses, each student staying at least 1 year and sometimes for 2 or 3 years on fellowship stipends. Two of our training programs are financed by NIH and one by the Ford Foundation. They deal with (1) steroid chemistry and its applications to medicine, (2) neuroendocrinology and (3) mammalian reproduction and population control-this last financed by the Ford Foundation. Our professional staff consists of organic chemists, biochemists, physiologists, pharmacologists, internists, and we usually have collaborative working relations with half a dozen private and State hospitals in the area. For example, in two State hospitals we are doing work on schizophrenia and in another on aging, with the cooperation of psychiatrists and psychologists. We have projects ranging from molecular biology in relation to cancer, up to and including the behavioral sciences involving research in nervous and mental and vascular diseases. While our laboratories are concerned with basic science, our collaborative relations with hospitals give us opportunities to apply basic discoveries. Several examples of this are worth noting. Dr. Gregory Pincus and Dr. M. C. Chang, who are widely known for their basic research on mammalian reproduction, turned their investigations into the discovery of the very practical birth control pill, i.e., synthetic steroids that block ovulation. This work originated at the Worcester Foundation some 15 years ago through their investigations on animals and was then extended, with the cooperation of Dr. John Rock and Dr. Celso Garcia, to a group of women volunteers, first in Boston and later in Puerto Rico. Clinical studies in Puerto Rico and