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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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