The Biotech and Doctor Tussle

A guest article by Nicholas Pang, self confessed medical journalist

Do you think advances in biotechnology will lessen the role of a doctor?

This, being a less factual topic, will inevitably give rise to more value judgements and sweeping generalisations than other topics - but concurrently, it is also highly thought provoking, allowing the layman to pipe in at a volume as audible as that of the learned professional.

First moot point - the borders between biotechnology and medicine are rapidly blurring. Doctors today are firmly grounded in a broad-based biological education in their early years. Concurrent advances in medical technology, especially the advent of DNA recombinant technology, the Human Genome Project and the absolutely essential task of completing the mapping of the human genome to unveil the mystery of many diseases, have turned biotechnology and medicine into increasingly complementary sciences.

Current medical professionals no longer work and conduct research alone. The increasing number of Nobel Prizes won as a team are testament that different hybrid talents do a good medical research effort make. This point, alone, is sufficient to demonstrate that biotechnology will actually INCREASE the role of a doctor, as due to modern research uncovering the many unseen links between previously independent fields of science, there is now more opportunity for research in one field to benefit another.

Thus doctors can prey on the massive output that was previously the exclusive preserve of physics, due to the many biomedical engineers now in operation. Likewise, now that there are so many collaborative efforts and joint degree programmes between different cuts of the same science pie - biochemistry or biogeology, anyone? - biotechnology can answer an increasing number of medical questions - and vice versa.

As in world geography, science has reached its practical threshold where there are no proverbial "vast swathes of wilderness" to foray into, we have to contend ourselves with identifying the various minute rivulets and valleys on the map through GPS positioning technology. How these geological features mutually affect and interact are now the key premise of geography.

Likewise, the frontiers of science have been pushed to their very limits. We are now entering an age where ecumenism (to pinch a religious term), the mutual links and dependency betwen branches of science, and thus biotechnology and medicine, defines the cutting edge of science.