Scientists Urged To Join Health Care Debate

Better testing for disease predisposition and disease by genetic diagnostics will "occupy center-stage by the mid-to-late 1990s," forecasts SmithKline Beecham's R&D president George Post, speaking at the recent Jackson Laboratory's annual meeting in Bar Harbour, Maine, USA.

"Genetics will impose profound changes on health care over the next two decades," said Dr Poste, and in so doing "it will be but one component in a larger, and more complex, debate on how the cost of health care can be constrained and how limited health care resources should be allocated."

Dr Poste called on those in the scientific community to be involved in the issues surrounding health care, saying "those in the vanguard of the evolution of genetic medicine, whether working in academia, government or industry, must recognize their responsibility to shape the framework for debate, and they cannot abdicate analysis to the non-scientific community."