But Watson and Crick could never have discovered the double helix, and Linus Pauling could never have discovered the structures of proteins, and nearly a dozen Nobel Prizes would have been impossible without x-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, tools developed by physicists that underpin virtually all we now know about the molecular basis of disease. Now it is time for biomedicine, through new NIH dollars, to strengthen the foundations in basic science that have gotten us here. Former NIH Director Harold Varmus agrees. NIH-supported investigators have ordinarily been the users, not the inventors, of key technologies. While the NIH budget doubled over the past 10 years, the NIH instrumentation budget dropped in half.
Biologists are now the biggest users.
Demand is 4 times greater than the supply. Biochemists at Berkeley, Irvine, and MIT are now seeking private donors to help buy new beam lines. Biologists have now taken over as the single largest single class of users. I propose a cheaper, faster, more efficient way. Computational biologists need 1000-fold more computer power on their desks, and access to teraflop computers.