The physician-scientist: An essential — and fragile — link in the medical research chain

It was a singular honor for me to give the second annual James A. Shannon Lecture at the National Institutes of Health last October. Indeed, I would not have been there at all without Shannon. That is not because I knew him personally, but rather because of the NIH that he — more than anyone else — created between 1949 and 1968. Shannon’s intelligence, vision, decisiveness, single-mindedness, and political acumen, first as Associate Director for Research of the National Heart Institute and then as Director of NIH, produced a powerful magnet that attracted me to Bethesda in 1959. Forty years later, I had the opportunity to reflect on why preparing one’s self for a career in research, as epitomized by coming to NIH, was so clearly the thing for recent medical school graduates to do then and, just as clearly and paradoxically, is not the thing to do today. What follows are my reflections I offered in the Shannon lecture.