New IoM President Worries About Biomedicine's Image

WASHINGTON--Biomedical researchers need to win over the public to survive attacks on their integrity and answer questions about the value of their work to society, says cardiologist Kenneth Shine, the new president of the Institute of Medicine (IoM). "We have to work harder to bolster confidence in universities and in research," says Shine, named last month to a five-year term as president of the 470-member institute that is closely affiliated with the National Academy of Sciences. "People have lost sight, in the current environment, of how fragile these institutions are, and how important it is that we protect and sustain them." According to Shine, reports of improper conduct by segments of the research establishment in recent years--including the indirect costs scandals and allegations of research fraud-- have been greatly exaggerated. Scientists, for the most part, are already fully accountable for the federal money they receive, he says. "We [the research community] are accountable," Shine claims. "Universities are already doing most of what the public is demanding in terms of financial matters, potential conflicts of interest, and ethical considerations, but their actions must become much more visible. I hope that the Institute of Medicine can help to get that message out." The 57-year-old Shine has spent the past five years as dean of the medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has been on the faculty since 1971, and is a past president of the American Heart Association. At IoM he succeeds Samuel Thier, who resigned last summer to become president of Brandeis University. Thier, who served as president for six years, is credited with solidifying the institute's reputation among officials in the executive branch and within Congress, IoM's primary clients and benefactors (The Scientist, June 24, 1991, page 3). During his tenure, Thier also created and built up an endowment, which now totals $20 million, that has given the institute the financial independence to conduct its own studies. Shine says he hopes to enhance the institute's reputation among policymakers and to "significantly increase" the endowment. Another major issue facing the institute, according to Shine, involves the nation's health care delivery system, including such aspects as quality of care, patients' access to it, and its cost. "I hope that we can provide leadership on all of these issues," he says. "At the same time, we'll leave decisions about how to finance health care to the politicians." Shine also believes that universities must strengthen their ties to industry to retain the country's global leadership in the life sciences and biotechnology. "The most rapidly growing source of support for biomedical research is industry," he says. "The private sector is conducting more and more basic research, and we need to improve communications between academia and industry to make the best use of this work." Colleagues who have worked with Shine speak of his prodigious energy, analytic mind, equanimity, and leadership abilities. They predict that those qualities will serve him well at the institute. Says Thier: "I've known Ken for 30 years [both men spent much of the 1960s at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital], and he was always someone that the rest of us looked up to. He's direct and honest, and when you disagree with him he doesn't take it personally. He doesn't leave any hard feelings, and that's important in this job." Dick Knapp, senior vice president at the American Association of Medical Colleges, has watched Shine take on various assignments within the association. "His mind is a very active place," says Knapp. "He understands every aspect of the debate over NIH funding--from its strategic plan to the issue of new construction--and he's also been a strong advocate of research within the Veterans Administration. "He is the incoming chairman of our Council of [medical school] Deans, and we're going to miss him." Shine has testified before Congress many times, on a variety of health care issues, and Edward Brandt, former assistant secretary for health in the Reagan administration, says that Shine is no stranger to the ways of Washington. "He's familiar with how Congress and the executive branch works, and he has a keen sense of the future," says Brandt, executive dean of the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and chairman of the IoM search committee that recommended Shine. As a research scientist, Shine has studied ionic exchange in heart muscle tissue and the effect of a loss of blood flow into that tissue. An analysis by the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information of his most-cited papers identified two articles that have each collected roughly 150 citations since their publication in the 1970s (American Journal of Physiology, 221:1408, 1971; and Circulation, 53:322, 1976), a rate that reflects considerable impact among life scientists. Shine received both his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University. He was elected a member of IoM in 1988.

New IoM President Worries About Biomedicine's Image

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of