Biomedical research: Establishment vs Establishment

last SG · 2007-02-09T16:07:45+00:00

What we should look for in our biomed investment are the potential for job creation and commercial gains. There's no point pumping millions of investment to...

Cystaire SG

This past few days there has been a war of words between two powerful members of the establishment, Mr Philip Yeo of A*Star and Dr Lee Wei Ling of NNI about the current state of the biomedical research industry.

Is it thriving or ailing?

Dr Lee commented that (ST 8 Feb)...

"This is not a matter of one-upmanship. We're talking about billions of dollars of tax-payers' money. I will not let this mistake continue."

From Mr Yeo's perspective...

"The debate has drawn strong words from both sides, with outgoing A*Star chairman Philip Yeo remarking that Dr Lee had not set foot into the biomedical centre Biopolis, where key research institutes are clustered."

On the other hand, Dr Lee countered that...

"I would say that Mr Philip Yeo, having never practiced as a doctor, is strategising about biomedical research directions in an ivory tower. That is why he can dismiss hepatitis B and head injury as unimportant."

Needless to say, many Singaporeans are concerned about the costs of building a biomedical industry. The amounts of money involved is huge and the payoffs may be uncertain.

The pharmaceutical companies are posting record high returns. However the eventual results of basic biomedical research is still unknown at this time. The first batch of A*Star PhD scholars are just graduating, and the MD-PhDs are not even done school yet.

I am disappointed that instead of a lively debate using facts and figures, the discussion has quickly turned into a game of pulling rank.

If you consider this a lone voice of reason against the establishment - in what way is a director of a national institute not establishment?

All of us little people are utterly confused.

robertteh SG

This debate clearly represents different things to different people depending on one's perception of the issues involved.

To me, the issues being debated are more than biomedical research but bespeak of more fundamental issues of our governance as may be summarized as follows:-

(1) When our leaders talk of world-class leadership and creating all sorts of hubs or chasing the world cup in football, honestly do they have the abilities to attain such goals and objectives. What kind of implementation or practical talents do they have among their own numbers in attaining all these goals. Are they over-confident of themselves or are they simply too self-centred to understand what were behind such endeavours. There are major challenges which need to be targetted at and not just spewing policies or spending taxpayers' billions or importing of all the foreign talents and throwing good monies after bad monies.

(2) Do we have among a heavy-weight technology-startup experts among ministers or top civil servants of the calibre of Stanley Shih to build up international products needed by the world and create brand names and introducing all the practical knowledge applications for technology startups to succeed. Ask Philip Yeo and we all will recall his approach is to send more and more top students overseas and what were his follow-up plans to use these proteges for after graduation. Did they go into speerheading technology startups to support our value-adding economic restructuring plans announced over the past three recessions?

For one thing we cannot over-rely on only overly conceptual incentives or generalist academic-oriented talents to get to what we want -value for monies and targeting and strategizing with a master plan is critical but did Philip Yeo come up with one such master plan to ensure practical follow-up to restructure the past value-adding upgrading plans to take our economy one notch higher to where Dr.Goh Keng Swee left us.

So with this type of conceptual policy approach we are unlikely to have the wherewithal to make it big in biomedical researches given the keen competitions among such similar centres.

I have to ask Philip Yeo based on what confidence that his vision as painted by him will be achieved given our smaller resources and lesser implementation abilities among our civil servants to restructure the economy. Do we have any better triumph cards then some pools of generalists who know next to nothing other than academic educations. How many of them are that creative or entrepreneurial as compared with the like of Bill Gate or Stanley Shih in creating technology start-ups and succeed against world competitions.

(3) Can we talk up the economic competitiveness just by praising government's past policies based on academic theories?

It would appear that for most of the past 40 years now, our leaders have been managing the country academically, legalistically with little hands-on implementation abilities.

That is why, when we try to copy Taiwan by going into semi-conductor wafer fabrication, computer and micro-electronic, our wafer plants set up with huge capital pumped in for years have not turned in any credible results.

Chartered Semi-Conductor will be forever playing second fiddle to the Taiwanese firms specializing in wafer fab.

We do not have strategists who could see both macro and micro pictures of the whole economic restructuring and our scholars in EDB like Philip Yeo could at best scrape the whole Biomedical drive at the surface.

I remember at one time, it was reported by some biomedical scientist interviewed by the press as to why she did not choose to return to Singapore to do her stint of biomedical research in our motivated environment and her answer was: She has to decide whether to work in more advanced centres of research in UK of which there were 16 as compared with Singapore which has yet to establish even one leading centre.

Dr. Lee Wei Ling may be right in disagreeing with the self-centred policies adopted by our government and Mr. Philip Yeo mere is a by-product of our past conceptual policy or ivory-tower approach adopted by our first-generation leaders.

If there is a fault-line in our past leadership system, it shows up clearly in our launching into world cup quest, semi-conductor and all the world-class or leadership jazz which could not be implemented due to the sheer lack of practical implementation strategizing.

ndmmxiaomayi SG

While no doubt Singapore's biomedical industry is reaping profits, I doubt it would last, going by how strong developing nations are.

Mr Yeo, if I'm not wrong, is a businessman, and will see profits. Dr Lee, on the other hand, is a doctor, and definitely would have understood the consequences and the severity of illnesses if not treated, no matter how minor.

It's a debate of business profits against medical research and somewhere in between, they cross each other paths.

countdracula SG

you have correctly pointed out that the economic planning policies are at best an academic exercise....this govt for some reason prefers to engage itself with so-called 'high-value' industries and at huge expense....it's almost staking the future into something which has previously proven elusive to many....perhaps they might find miracles but that would at best be superficial....the job numbers alone does not justify, what more the economic value....i am willing to bet just one ir that's to come in 2 years time would be more productive than the biomed in terms of jobs and economic returns.....

i'm not sure how dr. lee sees this but she's perhaps one of the more down to earth elites they have out there... i wouldn't classify her as an establishment, more of an anomaly...

robertteh SG

If Biomedical researches are to produce the desired results, then they must lead this area with research breakthroughs of one kind or another.

If there are no research breakthrough why are we spending so much on the salaries of the expensive researchers?

So Philip Yeo has side-tracked the relevant issue raised by Dr. Lee Wei Ling who rightly equated results in this field with scientifiic breakthrough.

It is difficult to justify billions of salaries spent on such expensive manpower if Philip Yeo and the ministers are interested only in the other fringe benefits or spin-offs as there could always be other less expensive like co-investments or other incentive schemes to attract allied firms to our soils.

charlize SG

Maybe there is more to it than meets the eye.

If not, why suddenly 2 bigwigs decide to cross swords? Laughing

ndmmxiaomayi SG

Results does not equate to breakthroughs. Even if your research leads to small improvements in technology and science, it's good enough.

LazerLordz SG

[quote]Originally posted by charlize:
Maybe there is more to it than meets the eye.

If not, why suddenly 2 bigwigs decide to cross swords?

[/quote

hehe Laughing

matleep SG

Saying is easy. Saying that i want to achieve this or that breakthrough but doing is hard. Which is probably why we need these expensive researchers to make things simpler. But even then, it doesn't guarantee that breakthrough could be achieve in one or two years. The huge amount of time and effort required had been explained by Philip Yeo which is why you won't see any results for now.

Also for your investment by allied firms, I suppose its easy to attract them to our soils. But keeping them in our soil might be kind of hard given the rise of India and China.

Fingolfin_Noldor SG

The Govt is obsessed with big names because it thinks big names will attract others and funding etc. But what it fails to see is that properly trained researchers with inquiring minds can do the job just as well. Science is quite a hit and miss affair and I disagree with the Govt's approach with regards to big names. Furthermore, the Govt's attitudes towards Science is appalling. Focusing on one main field only is recipe for disaster and only serves to alienate local talent who are interested in other fields and choose to ply their trade else where instead of contributing to Singapore. Fact of the matter is, if the Govt had taken an enlightened approach to Science a long time ago instead of playing around with social engineering for the past decades, none of this would have happened. We would never have to had the need of injecting billions into research just to catch up.

At the end of the day, the Govt is going to realise that many things are interconnected and that developing inquiring minds is not something you can just order over the counter.

countdracula SG

that's not good enough...we're in a different era to be trying for the elusive breakthroughs....we can't possibly hope the accidental discoveries of pascal, antoinette, newton and eistein to be replicated at the whims and fancy of some bureaucracy......at least not as part of the next 'economic wing'......the small improvements in technology you mentioned will not justify the billions already spent and more to be spent....they are not doing some science experiment here but hedging part of a future...the statistics presented by yeo was a 'pre-existing condition', the jobs, the contribution to gnp and etc were established before the setting up of biopolis and what not.....

AndrewPKYap SG

It is possible that the whole fiasco started because Dr Lee Wei Ling of NNI did not get the funding she wanted?

Cystaire SG

Robert, I've read many of your posts and generally agree with many of your observations.

However in this debate I hope you can see that neither party is merely a disinterested observer. Research funding for government R&D houses, including Dr. Lee Wei Ling's NNI is also within the government biomed efforts.

Some of her observations may be valid, but her suggested solutions for identifying niches are no less "ivory tower" than Mr Philip Yeo's. It is bizarre and amusing for Dr. Lee to say the Mr Philip Yeo is "ivory tower" as many of his earlier comments about biomedical research is about as pragmatic as they can get.

Of course everyone also knows that Dr. Lee's brother is the Prime Minister, who is supportive of the currently biomedical direction, though he has not commented on this so far.

This is why I mentioned that this war of words is truly confusing.

Ito_^ SG

Tale of Two Towers. Laughing

Cystaire SG

Mr Yeo was trained as an engineer, but he has an MBA from Harvard, so he does see things from a more business perspective.

Dr Lee was trained as an neurologist, so you are right that she should tends towards a medical view. However, I hope you understand that doctors of senior appointment are practically administrators who are supposed to understand the big picture, so she should understand what the biomedical field entails.

In fact her suggestion to focus on head injury and Hepatitis B stems from her belief that there is a strong market in these areas.

So I strongly disagree that it is a debate of "business profits vs medical research". Both parties clearly understand the importance of business profits, its the direction that they don't agree.

Cystaire SG

I understand your concern in the first paragraph.

However you say that you wouldn't classify her as establishment.

A director of a public funded medical hospital who is the sister of the PM is not establishment.

Then who is establishment?

As for your "down-to-earth" comment, I already mentioned in an earlier post that it is bizarre for one very pragmatic leader to call another pragmatic leader as "ivory tower".

Of course she is down-to-earth - she is at least as down-to-earth as Mr Yeo when it comes to identifying niches for making tonnes of money out of biomedicine.

charlize SG

You expect a Lord of The Rings type battle scene soon? Laughing

Cystaire SG

Originally posted by countdracula:
that's not good enough...we're in a different era to be trying for the elusive breakthroughs....we can't possibly hope the accidental discoveries of pascal, antoinette, newton and eistein to be replicated at the whims and fancy of some bureaucracy......at least not as part of the next 'economic wing'......the small improvements in technology you mentioned will not justify the billions already spent and more to be spent....they are not doing some science experiment here but hedging part of a future...the statistics presented by yeo was a 'pre-existing condition', the jobs, the contribution to gnp and etc were established before the setting up of biopolis and what not.....

I don't understand your statement in bold. Pascal, Newton and Einstein - in what way were their discoveries "accidental"? History does not support your view, Sir Alex Fleming's discovery of pencillin is much closer to accidental than the three scientists you mentioned.

Also, who is Antoinette? What did she actually discover?

countdracula SG

the reason i didn’t brand her as establishment is because she comments mostly in her personal capacity….yeo on the other hand carries his name tag prominently…i’ve spotted the former a couple of times doing volunteer work, very nondescript in all sense of the word, most would have taken her as a bag lady if they pass by her…i guess that’s down to earth for me….quite apparently this apple has fallen quite far from the tree….

Cystaire SG

I guess I consider her establishment because of her position and you don't because of her behaviour.

I can agree with that.

However you feel that this apple has fallen quite far from the tree. Based on the current heated debate (and an earlier debate on human organs) I don't agree with your view. I think the apple has every feature of the tree.