We live in the Century of Biology. Unless, of course, it has been christened prematurely by the likes of Craig Venter and Daniel Cohen (2), or if it already happened in America and was coincident with the penultimate century, the Century of Physics (3). But I don't think so. The signs are all there, whether you seek the oracle at the New York Times, or the Nightly News, or the Huffington Post, daily you are astonished by news in Pasteur's quadrant of biological research (4), fundamental discovery applied to the human condition. The stories are not yet the torrent of cures that the century will see, not simply the genomic coding for predisposition to a specific illness, but astounding news even so, at the edge of precision medicine. This is a time that should be attracting the best and brightest to biology, a time for nongovernmental organizations and corporations and governments to spend madly on research, a time for the heroes of science to be savoring the many flavors of investigative medicine.
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