Dr. Gary Gibbons, Director, NHLBI:  Let me just close with perhaps a more personal note since we go back a long ways. I think we always are thinking about the next generation. And I was wondering about your reflections now that you have a few gray hairs, my friend, what you could give as advice to young investigators and any reflections you have on either role models or important events that put you on this path.

Dr. Richard Lifton, Yale University:  Boy. I think the parts, just to reflect for a moment, I started graduate school and medical school in 1975. And at that time, I had a vague notion that genetics was going to develop in a way that was going to ultimately allow us to have insight into human disease. But at the time I was a graduate student, there were no meaningful experiments really that one could conceive of doing at the molecular level for most diseases that afflicted humans. So I consequently spent my graduate work efforts on a model system, the fruit fly. 

It was unimaginable to me in 1975, or even by the time I finished medical school, that in such a short period of time, we were going to be routinely sequencing whole genomes, all the genes in genomes. We just had no imaginable pathway by which that was likely to be feasible.

So one of the lessons that I’ve taken from that is with creativity and dedication, science can move incredibly fast. And the scientific community and NIH was a major driver of this, really was essential to the development of the tools that have become so robust for discovery and increasingly, for patient care. 

So one of the things that I find so exciting today is that the experiments we can do today seem so simple compared to things that we were doing 35 years ago. So I think it’s an incredibly exciting time for young people to be embarking on scientific careers, and I only wish we had another 35 years to see what the future brings in my career but that won’t be the case. So I am very concerned that we’re successful in inspiring and recruiting and getting on productive career paths the next generation of young investigators. Because the foundations that we’re laying today, I think we’re going to be reaping the benefits from these for generations to come.

Dr. Gibbons:  All right, well, thank you so much for that. I suspect you have another good 25 years left in you, Rick. But I really appreciate this time and your work and your contributions, and wish you the best, my friend.
SEGMENT 5: Dr. Gibbons and Dr. Lifton Q&A Transcript
May 29, 2013




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