Response to Straits times article
March 30, 2002
Singapore: Forget the Sexy and Stay Backward.
I am Edison Liu, and I am
the Executive Director of the Genome Institute of Singapore. As a recent arrival to Singapore, I have watched but not commented
on issues publicly debated in the Republic's press.
The recent article by Andy Ho in the Saturday edition of the Straits
Times ("Forget the Sexy, focus on the mundane") however compelled me to respond to the reported statements of the two INSEAD
business school professors, Yves Doz and Peter Williamson. Though I respect their right to an academic opinion, their comments
must be addressed because they are simply and completely wrong.
Prior to my coming to Singapore, I was the Scientific Director for the
Division of Clinical Sciences at the National Cancer Institute in the USA, a 1200-person, US$140 million per year enterprise,
and before that, I was a chair of an academic department in the United States. So, on a professional level, I feel competent
to rebut the comments of Doz and Williamson. I would like to make it clear at the outset, that I am responding as an individual
subscriber to the Straits Times and am not representing the Singapore government or my institute. The core of the comments
by Doz and Williamson is that biotechnology is sexy but too difficult for Singapore to succeed in, and that the Republic should
focus on those industries in which it does well: e.g. logistics.
They imply that Singapore does not have the wherewithal to succeed in
this complex field, and may never attract and retain sufficient talent to support biotechnology development. A subtext is
that global scientific talents do not thrive when "seed-planted" especially to Singapore where academics do not talk to each
other ("no interaction"). The message from these critics is that Singapore is chasing a flashy industry, which, like the dot.coms
may come and go. They suggest that in this process of exploration into biotechnology, Singapore will waste money, lots of
money.
I not only disagree with their opinions, but I assert that their
facts are also wrong. Since the start of biotechnology, this industry has grown
into a multi-billion dollar business creating innumerable jobs and has shown no indication of being "here today and gone tomorrow".
When taken together with other biomedically related industries, the entire life sciences business cluster has done extraordinarily
well. In fact, the life sciences are considered prominently in the strategic discussions of every major company from IBM and
Oracle to General Electric and (dare I say) the logistic company DHL. Business thinkers are attracted to the life sciences
industry, which includes biotechnology, exactly because its business cycle is
proven to be long and the sector has successfully weathered the faddism of the dot.com's. Moreover, as part of the peace dividend,
more money has been diverted by governments to biomedicine from defense hardware. Even with the events of September 11(superscript:
th), much of the increase in defense spending in the US is on countering bioterrorism.
Policy planners have always understood that the profit margins in biomedicine
are significant, but an added attraction is that the enabling knowledge-based
infrastructures for biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, unlike chip manufacturing and even some logistics, cannot be easily
transplanted in its totality to a cheaper off-shore location. As a result, there
has been an increasing interest in the life science cluster in most industrialized and newly industrialized nations. The comments
by Doz and Williamson fly in the face of major efforts by the governments of England, Ireland, Germany, Canada, Korea, Japan,
and China in pursuing biomedicine as a point of industrial development. The life
sciences are no longer just sexy,
but are becoming a staple in a nation's economic well-being. For many keen observers in biomedicine, the question is not whether
Singapore should invest in the life sciences, but whether Singapore can afford to not invest given the intense developmental
plans by its regional competitors.
The assertion by Doz and Williamson that "seed-planting" of foreign talents
will not work in biotechnology is absolutely false. Biology and the sciences are not like literature where the nuances of
culture and language feed the creative forces. The universal language in biology is English,
and the scientific principles and deductive experimental processes are identical regardless of location and sub-discipline.
The limiting factors are only resources, infrastructure, and vision, all of which Singapore now possesses. Singapore, in fact,
is unique in all of Asia for its potential in supporting the transplantation of global talent. It is the only Asian country that uses English as a first language and where the life style and operating systems are compatible
with practices in highly developed countries. In biology, these are some of the major factors in attracting domain talents
and their families.
The seed-planting as Doz and Williamson describes so fearfully is in
fact common place in the localities where biomedicine is the most successful perhaps, with the United States as the best example.
Many US schools have almost 50% of their science graduate students originating from another country. During my 15 years running
biomedical research programmes, I have never had a laboratory made up of less than 40% foreigners. One does not need much
prompting to identify the successful locale-transplants in the life sciences:
Hanafusa (from Japan to the US), Carlo Croce (from Italy to the US), Riccardo Della Favera (from Italy to the US), Rudi Jaenisch
(from Europe to the US), Roel Nusse (from the Netherlands to the US), Tak Mak
(from China to Canada), Wen Hwa Lee (from Taiwan to the US), and Axel Ullrich (Germany to the US back to Germany) to name
a few. At the National Institutes of Health (USA) 30-35% of all new faculty were
from Asia alone.
Taken together, these data lead one senior NIH official to suggest that
US biotechnology is fueled mainly by transplanted Asian scientists his question
was "where are the Americans?". Globalization of recruitment (a.k.a. seed-planting) is so successful a strategy in biomedicine
that the rest of the world is copying this formula. The European Union has worked to change regulations for academic appointments
to allow for recruitment across national borders. The prestigious Karolinska Institute of Sweden boasts of a faculty from
global origins. Germany has changed its immigration laws to allow more foreigners (mainly south Asians) to enter the country
in order to feed its high tech industries. Japan is considering establishing an English language biomedical university in
Okinawa that will recruit a significant proportion of the senior staff from abroad.
The concern by Doz and Williamson that I, as a talent "seed-transplant"
may not thrive in "non-native" soil such as in Singapore is touching but unwarranted. However, I am glad to report that I
am very productive and happy here. My family has integrated well into this community, and my colleagues in the States are
envious of what we have been able to accomplish in a short period of time. We are recruiting with relative ease from the US,
Canada, and Europe, and are beginning to attract back some of the best Singaporean
talent who went abroad to study and work.
Everyone is excited that
we are creating something new. As far as I am concerned, Singapore is doing almost everything right, and that Singapore, despite
its detractors, will ultimately succeed.
Doz and Williamson may be experts in certain aspects of business, but their comments uncovered a remarkable ignorance of biomedicine, and, sadly, of Singapore
as well. By their account, and using their spirit, Singapore should have remained a subservient distribution center for the
Malay peninsula (because it was safe). Independence was sexy at that time, but they
would have Singapore pursue the stability of a commodity driven economy of rubber plantations and tin mines. Singapore should
not have teamed with multinationals because the prevailing view then was that MNCs would
exploit a third world small country, but we know they did not.
By their reckoning, Singapore should not have prospered given the absence
of resources and a very limited population base. This kind of depressing nay saying may be acceptable amongst European academics,
but will be disastrous for Singapore whose survival is dependent on bold but thoughtful and strategic initiatives.
Andy Ho did us a service and raised some serious questions about the
wisdom of Singapore's drive into the biomedical sciences. The timing was appropriate given the speech by President SR Nathan
to the Opening of the 10(superscript: th) Parliament, where Singaporeans are warned of the serious economic and social challenges
that the country faces and how we must change to remain strong. Ho's article, if nothing else, should spark a national discussion at the grass roots about one of Singapore's solutions. So here, in this letter, is
my contribution to that grass roots discussion. I have transplanted myself, my
non-Asian wife, my three young children, and a number of my scientific colleagues precisely because I believe in this country
and what it is trying to accomplish in biomedicine. If little Singapore can succeed, then there is hope for the rest of the
world. The vision is nothing short of revolutionary, and I welcome all Singaporeans to join us in these efforts.
Edison Liu, M.D.
Executive Director,
Genome Institute of Singapore
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