Q&A: From the lab to the clinic

It's a rather perplexing quandary for the United States: Despite spending 16 percent of its gross domestic product and more than $7,000 per person on healthcare --2.5 times the average of the 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) -- the average lifespan of US citizens ranked 24th in the OECD in 2007.

Michael Crow Image: Arizona State University

With an annual budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of more than $30 billion, the problem is not that the amount invested in medical research, said linkurl:Michael Crow,;http://president.asu.edu/about/michaelcrow the president of Arizona State University and founder of its Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes, but how it is used. The Scientist spoke with Crow, who wrote a linkurl:commentary;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7340/full/471569a.html on this topic published today (March 30) in Nature, about how he thinks researchers and public funding agencies need to reevaluate their research goals to...