256 HAMBURG
The extraordinary success of basic research in the neurosciences, and
also in genetics, provides a continuing flow of illuminating glimpses
into the most wondrous of machines, the human brain. The promise for
socially useful applications in health and disease is undeniable. By the
same token, exposure to clinical or social problems can be exceedingly
stimulating for basic sciences, as has so vividly been the case in genetics
and also in neurosciences.
Just a short time ago, the great geneticist, James Watson, made a
public confession that is illuminating for our field. In their classic
paper, Watson and Crick did not mention the classic Avery, McLeod,
and McCarty paper of 1944 on the pneumococcus transformation
experiments, which came about a decade earlier, showing that DNA
was the genetic material–a profound discovery. Of course they stood
on the shoulders of Avery, McLeod and McCarty. What is especially in
teresting about their fundamental work is that they were clinicians
trying to understand pneumonia. This was the pre-antibiotic era. They
wanted to understand the pneumococcus organism in order to do
something about treatment and perhaps immunization vis-à-vis pneu
monia, and they discovered the deeply important fact that DNA is the
genetic material.
As Axelrod has clearly pointed out, there has been a similarly
stimulating effect of stress problems and clinical disorders on basic
neuroscience. There is a dynamic interplay between basic and clinical
research which has been fostered over decades, probably better in the in
tramural NIH than anywhere else. Yet the full promise of this approach
will probably require even higher levels of cooperation because we have
now entered an era of exploring the extent to which the methods of the
sciences can be brought to bear on the entire range of factors that deter
mine the health of the public and to delineate well-tested interventions
for diagnosis, therapy, and prevention. This is especially important for
psychiatric progress. It requires excellent basic science at every level of
biological organization; it requires a dynamic interplay between basic
and applied science; it requires a widening of horizons to include new
or neglected lines of inquiry; and it requires an enduring commitment
to the scientific study of behavior.