The Future of Biology and the AIBS

~E public image of the biologist has not changed as much as the biologist himself has changed in the last century. In addition to the typical traditional naturalist, chasing butterflies with a net or collecting plants in a vasculum, new types have developed. We now have ecologists and Iimnologists measuring in a precise manner the factors in the environment of living creatures, microbiologists and anatomists with' their probing microscopes, and molecular biologists scanning complex electronic apparatus. As far as techniques are concerned, many present-day biologists do not really differ from chemists, physicists, or mathematicians; their objects, however, are not lifeless matter but, instead, are plants, animals, and microorganisms. As biologists, we should be concerned with our public image, because the future of our profession is involved. Public support is not exclusively dependent upon performance but also upon what the citizen, the lawmaker, and the industrialist thinks we are capable of producing. This is demonstrated in the large numbers of scientists with chemical training now employed by industry to perform biological research, for instance, on insecticidal and herbicidal problems. Moreover, a public image which is too restricted adversely affects the number of youngsters entering the field. A preformed and narrow image of the professional biologist may condition students to chosing chemistry or some other more publicized or "glamorous" field before they are exposed to any training in biology, Even the most stimulating of teachers cannot prevail against this sort of mental fix. ' The AIBS is concerned about this image of the biologist; the Biology News Bureau seeks to improve the quality and quantity of news coverage given biology and biologists in lay publications. It should be obvious that as an intellectual achievement the discovery of a new plant pigment, phytochrome, controlling flowering and numerous other processes, is at least as significant and exciting as the creation of a new element by neutron bombardment or the discovery of a new planet such as Pluto. Yet the public knows less about phytochrome than about Pluto. The production of a new disease-resistant wheat variety is as exacting and complex a task as the synthesis of a new chemical or the development of a new mathematical formula. Yet chemists and physicists in government service have a more than tenfold better chance to reach top salary levels than biologists, even though there is no basic difference in training, intellectual capacity, or performance records. Ironically, it is the very success of the biologists which keeps him out of the news and down on the salary scale. If the biologist were less successful in combating pests, weeds, flies, or cerealcrop diseases, famine and discomfort would long since have focused attention on the complexity of these biological-control problems. Biology has achieved, in the few centuries since scientific inquiry began, the most spectacular advances changing man's outlook on the world. The understanding of evolution, the rejection of generatio spontanea, recognition of the nature of disease, and control over plant and animal production (which was precarious in earlier centuries) altered the course of history, The cell theory was an essential forerunner of our understanding of heredity. Biochemistry made possible new insight in nutrition and physiology. Our society is different because of biological progress. Too often we accept these achievements as a matter of course. Most of us are no longer aware to what extent biological concepts such as growth, differentiation, evolution, nutrition, parasitism, and heredity are fundamental to our thinking in all disciplines economics, sociology, the humanities, and, above all, medicine. Physicists and chemists have achieved recognition through fantastic advances in technology based on basic research. Biologists have not received similar recognition. Biology has only crossed the threshold to knowledge, and the next half century unquestionably will witness spectacular development in our understanding of life, with concomitant advances in all health-related fields. There is no reason why, with deeper knowledge of the cell, human life cannot be prolonged considerably or why we cannot materially improve on the conversion