The end of the baseball "lockout" last April marked the survival of a crisis for owners, players, sponsors, sportswriters, announcers, and fans. The season was played out, and the lockout will soon be forgotten.
In striking contrast, the lockout of scientists working on research ranging from fundamental understandings of life processes to specific cures of literally hundreds of diseases that affect all of us (including aging and death) has increased to beyond the crisis level.
This coming year, greater than 80 percent of all biomedical scientists who depend on government funds to continue their work, as well as to support their own salaries, will be locked out of jobs. This will cause them to either leave research completely or somehow try to hang on till the lockout is ended. However, since they don't belong to a union, and therefore do not have contingency moneys, their ability to hang on becomes ...
