While I totally agree with the sentiment of this article, and I liked it (+1!), I think there is an important perspective that's sort of missing.
Here goes: A lot of people go into biology for their early educational studies, but then find that they can't find a stable enough job in it to support themselves or their family, and find it frustrating that their training doesn't translate to sustainable careers. There are many such cases. See https://www.reddit.com/r/biotech/
It's perhaps not as widely known as it should be that people who work in biomedical research usually make significant financial sacrifices to do so. And that many *other* people recognize this before they choose a *different* path, prioritizing other life goals such as supporting a family and having work-life balance.
Two examples from the field of cryonics, which I know well. The first example is Mike Darwin, who was one of the pioneers of the field. Despite utterly groundbreaking work, such as developing blood substitutes capable of sustaining life in dogs at hypothermic temperatures and creating many of the key practices of modern cryonics, from his public writings it seems that he faced frequent financial instability.
Another example is Yuri Pichugin, a cryobiologist who made many contributions, such as achieving exceptionally high viability in hippocampal slices after cryopreservation, developing the CI-VM-1 vitrification mixture, and pioneering the use of detergents such as SDS in cryoprotectant perfusion systems. Despite all of this, he was despondent about the lack of interest in his work and cryonics towards the end of his life (?cycle). https://cryonics.miraheze.org/wiki/Yuri_Pichugin
The article asks "why wouldn't you work in biology?" but the honest answer for many people is because they've seen what happens to even successful researchers like Darwin and Pichugin. They realize that it probably won't lead to many accolades, probably won't personally help them at all (it takes a village), and they might ultimately decide to choose a different career path even if it's not what they are most passionate about.
Basically I think that the reason that more people aren't working in biology is mostly a systems-level issue. The main goal should be for more public, philanthropic, and private funding for biomedical research. Many people are motivated to work in the field but kind of just can't, perhaps unless they make extreme sacrifices.
In fact, for some people who want to go into biomedical research, it might be better advice for some of them to get a different job that pays the bills and then build up their research career on the side. This is what Santiago Ramon y Cajal advised: https://www.amazon.com/Advice-Young-Investigator-Bradford-Book/dp/0262681501
I myself am in the hopefully early to mid stages of a career in biomedical research. I would love to see more talented people make advances in this field. I agree with you about the moral case for work in the field. I just want this perspective to be noted, because I think it's important to acknowledge this if we want to actually get more useful research done.
I intellectually agree with all this :) I originally had a lot of this extra nuance in the essay, but, in the end, I decided that there have already been plenty of level-headed articles about how we can encourage more people to enter the field via economic incentives, and very few essays that are...more focused on the emotional reason that I remain in the field. And I really wanted to put purely that emotion in this piece!
But again, agree with your comment in terms of material reality
This is great! sometimes people worry about like 20% of gdp going to healthcare but I’ve always wondered why it isn’t like 60%, counting 30% going to biomedical research. We’re so far beyond subsistence level wealth as a society, why don’t we spend insanely more trying to not die
I’m a bit less motivated by the preventing people dying than the preventing people suffering. Death allows systems to change, dictatorships to end, generations to transition. Imagine a world where grandpa and his selfish classmates buy up all the homes while voting to block new housing (that’s today’s world) but imagine he never dies.
Great essay. I think the issue is part economics and part education.
I started out working at a not-for-profit research institute looking into how leukemias resist treatment. It was meaningful and fulfilling work (every day was an education!), and the folks I worked alongside were world class, but the pay was such that I eventually couldn't afford my rent. I ended up resigning and taking a job at a biotech for slightly higher pay. That solved one problem but I was then introduced to the corporate concept of the three Rs: restructuring, realignment, and reduction-in-force. Given that sort of backdrop, I don't question people's desire to do something that's a bit more predictable and stable, at least in the short term. Not being able to pay your rent turns the moral implications of your work into an afterthought.
In terms of education, you bring a lot of background knowledge to bear on the import of biological research. The web of interconnected ideas you present - from being on the "bad side of medicine" to the "creaking, incurable black hole in the middle of [your] sight", and so on - is not easily attainted. It's unlikely that someone will arrive at those connections while scrolling through social media during their morning bus ride, with their last exposure to biology having been a frantic sprint to memorize some flash cards ahead of a final exam in high school. If you've never been involved in research then it *would* appear that "the authorities got it covered".
There's truth in your thesis, that this topic touches all of our lives and is worth everyone's consideration - it's a common denominator. So there is, by extension, value in taking a narrative like the one you've constructed and packaging it in a way that can be delivered, broadly, to meet people where they're at (what would the TikTok version of this essay look like?). I like to tell people that I do what I do in order to preserve people's dignity of choice - maybe there's something similar in your perspective that might resonate with others.
This is so good. And yeah, the bit about "Great, the authorities got it covered." For some reason, people seem to like to default to thinking that big things happen just during the natural course of life unfolding. But no...it's us. We make it happen or it won't. Hard things don't get magically solved.
“I will stay pure. I will stay untouched” captures something I see so much from the developed world. A total detachment from the progress in science going on around them that will eventually completely change their lives. I still think about the release of chatgpt, Sam in his chair thinking hmmm when should I release this WORLD CHANGING tool to us the public. WHAT?? I want to be the one to create the tools and decide when I will change people’s lives. Great writing!
Yes,this is bs about catheters.You Would think they almost kill you to be inserted.I have inserted them and had one inserted also.They are very helpful when your bladder is full and you cannot urinate.It actually feels great to get relief.I never had someone act like it was killing them either. It is better than not being able to go when you must and you cannot get to the urinal. This part,i disagree with.But,biology Is a facinating field.To bad we are not supporting more research,but at the moment,the guy in the white house wants nothing to do with American excellence in science.He seems to want to destroy it more than support it.
Great essay. As a trained biochemist who took an extended sabbatical to build marketing software nearly 10 years ago, I have to say I’ve always felt anxious about not getting back into bio. Recently I felt the time is right, and I’ve been looking around to see what’s interesting to work on. That’s when I came across your essay. A call to arms, if you will. I hope to learn more and dive back into the field soon, as I wholeheartedly agree that there are so many critical problems to work on in bio.
A lot of people aren’t going to be in a position to act on this directly. I think that, more practically, this pitch could be used to get more funding for the right kinds of research. (I’m thinking for example of Sergey Brin funding medical research about Parkinson’s.
Effective Altruism isn’t particularly focused on medical research because, being altruistic, it’s not normally as self-interested as this emotional pitch. But maybe it should be? Helping private donors figure out which medical research to fund seems like an important problem?
Biologist here. I work on plant biology. This won't help out anyone's medical trajectory. But it is most definitely biology. I think you are talking about medicine, which is related but not equal to biology. You could be just as mystified as why any one would work on plants, that's fine. But it is part of biology. By the way, who is the artist of the painting at the top of the post?
"The future, they have decided, will not come for me. I will stay pure. I will stay untouched."
this is meant to be ironic, but it really is how everything works, because if they could see the horror awaiting them, they would go insane, and civilization would not be possible
just as startup founders need to believe they will beat the odds and get rich, the modal person needs to believe they will stay, if not young forever (only kids think this, and the ones that become cynical too fast often just die), at least dignified and fulfilled; and that belief, sometimes buttressed by religious belief, keeps them going
"If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion."
EDIT: after ruminating on this more, the worst case might be succeeding at significantly extending life (and even youth!) but being too poor to afford it, or being too old to benefit from treatment, at least with God, everyone 'worthy' gets saved
I think about this a lot. How, as a software engineer, can I contribute in a medical or biotech field (neurotech seems particularly exciting to me)? Most of the things I read about biotech seem to come out of sci-fi novels
Personally, I think biology is the most exciting of all the sciences in the 21st century. (A hundred years ago, it would have been physics.)
However, for someone who does not already find the field compelling, your essay is unconvincing. "You're telling me I should devote decades of my life working in a field I don't like just to make the last few months of my life somewhat less miserable?"
Everyone knows that death is inevitable and its approach often unpleasant. Choosing to live a happy, productive life in a field other than biology or medicine does not in any way amount to averting one's eyes from this fact.
You ask, "Because how else could they go on about their day? How else could they ignore what awaits them?" The answer is that obsessing over an inevitability which you cannot change is neither sane nor rational.
Anyone who loves biology should absolutely pursue it. But don't do it because you fear the pain of death.
Biology concerns itself with empirical reality, not fantasy. Making end-of-life medicine less painful and traumatic is one thing; defeating death to achieve literal immortality is quite another. But neither is a worthwhile career focus if you don't love the subject.
No it isn't. If there's a hard upper limit to the human lifespan, and empirical evidence to date indicates that there is, no improvements to end-of-life palliative care will change that.
(They are people like Bryan Johnson trying to truly conquer death, and various anti-aging scientists, but their approach is unrelated to palliative care.)
While I totally agree with the sentiment of this article, and I liked it (+1!), I think there is an important perspective that's sort of missing.
Here goes: A lot of people go into biology for their early educational studies, but then find that they can't find a stable enough job in it to support themselves or their family, and find it frustrating that their training doesn't translate to sustainable careers. There are many such cases. See https://www.reddit.com/r/biotech/
It's perhaps not as widely known as it should be that people who work in biomedical research usually make significant financial sacrifices to do so. And that many *other* people recognize this before they choose a *different* path, prioritizing other life goals such as supporting a family and having work-life balance.
Two examples from the field of cryonics, which I know well. The first example is Mike Darwin, who was one of the pioneers of the field. Despite utterly groundbreaking work, such as developing blood substitutes capable of sustaining life in dogs at hypothermic temperatures and creating many of the key practices of modern cryonics, from his public writings it seems that he faced frequent financial instability.
Another example is Yuri Pichugin, a cryobiologist who made many contributions, such as achieving exceptionally high viability in hippocampal slices after cryopreservation, developing the CI-VM-1 vitrification mixture, and pioneering the use of detergents such as SDS in cryoprotectant perfusion systems. Despite all of this, he was despondent about the lack of interest in his work and cryonics towards the end of his life (?cycle). https://cryonics.miraheze.org/wiki/Yuri_Pichugin
The article asks "why wouldn't you work in biology?" but the honest answer for many people is because they've seen what happens to even successful researchers like Darwin and Pichugin. They realize that it probably won't lead to many accolades, probably won't personally help them at all (it takes a village), and they might ultimately decide to choose a different career path even if it's not what they are most passionate about.
Basically I think that the reason that more people aren't working in biology is mostly a systems-level issue. The main goal should be for more public, philanthropic, and private funding for biomedical research. Many people are motivated to work in the field but kind of just can't, perhaps unless they make extreme sacrifices.
In fact, for some people who want to go into biomedical research, it might be better advice for some of them to get a different job that pays the bills and then build up their research career on the side. This is what Santiago Ramon y Cajal advised: https://www.amazon.com/Advice-Young-Investigator-Bradford-Book/dp/0262681501
I myself am in the hopefully early to mid stages of a career in biomedical research. I would love to see more talented people make advances in this field. I agree with you about the moral case for work in the field. I just want this perspective to be noted, because I think it's important to acknowledge this if we want to actually get more useful research done.
I intellectually agree with all this :) I originally had a lot of this extra nuance in the essay, but, in the end, I decided that there have already been plenty of level-headed articles about how we can encourage more people to enter the field via economic incentives, and very few essays that are...more focused on the emotional reason that I remain in the field. And I really wanted to put purely that emotion in this piece!
But again, agree with your comment in terms of material reality
> plenty of level-headed articles about how we can encourage more people to enter the field via economic incentives
Could you share a few? I'm an outsider to the field and I'd like to give them a read
This is great! sometimes people worry about like 20% of gdp going to healthcare but I’ve always wondered why it isn’t like 60%, counting 30% going to biomedical research. We’re so far beyond subsistence level wealth as a society, why don’t we spend insanely more trying to not die
I’m a bit less motivated by the preventing people dying than the preventing people suffering. Death allows systems to change, dictatorships to end, generations to transition. Imagine a world where grandpa and his selfish classmates buy up all the homes while voting to block new housing (that’s today’s world) but imagine he never dies.
Great essay. I think the issue is part economics and part education.
I started out working at a not-for-profit research institute looking into how leukemias resist treatment. It was meaningful and fulfilling work (every day was an education!), and the folks I worked alongside were world class, but the pay was such that I eventually couldn't afford my rent. I ended up resigning and taking a job at a biotech for slightly higher pay. That solved one problem but I was then introduced to the corporate concept of the three Rs: restructuring, realignment, and reduction-in-force. Given that sort of backdrop, I don't question people's desire to do something that's a bit more predictable and stable, at least in the short term. Not being able to pay your rent turns the moral implications of your work into an afterthought.
In terms of education, you bring a lot of background knowledge to bear on the import of biological research. The web of interconnected ideas you present - from being on the "bad side of medicine" to the "creaking, incurable black hole in the middle of [your] sight", and so on - is not easily attainted. It's unlikely that someone will arrive at those connections while scrolling through social media during their morning bus ride, with their last exposure to biology having been a frantic sprint to memorize some flash cards ahead of a final exam in high school. If you've never been involved in research then it *would* appear that "the authorities got it covered".
There's truth in your thesis, that this topic touches all of our lives and is worth everyone's consideration - it's a common denominator. So there is, by extension, value in taking a narrative like the one you've constructed and packaging it in a way that can be delivered, broadly, to meet people where they're at (what would the TikTok version of this essay look like?). I like to tell people that I do what I do in order to preserve people's dignity of choice - maybe there's something similar in your perspective that might resonate with others.
This is so good. And yeah, the bit about "Great, the authorities got it covered." For some reason, people seem to like to default to thinking that big things happen just during the natural course of life unfolding. But no...it's us. We make it happen or it won't. Hard things don't get magically solved.
Do you know who made the artwork you put at the beginning of the essay?
i think it was a diffusion model
“I will stay pure. I will stay untouched” captures something I see so much from the developed world. A total detachment from the progress in science going on around them that will eventually completely change their lives. I still think about the release of chatgpt, Sam in his chair thinking hmmm when should I release this WORLD CHANGING tool to us the public. WHAT?? I want to be the one to create the tools and decide when I will change people’s lives. Great writing!
Yes,this is bs about catheters.You Would think they almost kill you to be inserted.I have inserted them and had one inserted also.They are very helpful when your bladder is full and you cannot urinate.It actually feels great to get relief.I never had someone act like it was killing them either. It is better than not being able to go when you must and you cannot get to the urinal. This part,i disagree with.But,biology Is a facinating field.To bad we are not supporting more research,but at the moment,the guy in the white house wants nothing to do with American excellence in science.He seems to want to destroy it more than support it.
Catheterising someone in urinary retention is actually really satisfying, for everyone
Great essay. As a trained biochemist who took an extended sabbatical to build marketing software nearly 10 years ago, I have to say I’ve always felt anxious about not getting back into bio. Recently I felt the time is right, and I’ve been looking around to see what’s interesting to work on. That’s when I came across your essay. A call to arms, if you will. I hope to learn more and dive back into the field soon, as I wholeheartedly agree that there are so many critical problems to work on in bio.
A lot of people aren’t going to be in a position to act on this directly. I think that, more practically, this pitch could be used to get more funding for the right kinds of research. (I’m thinking for example of Sergey Brin funding medical research about Parkinson’s.
Effective Altruism isn’t particularly focused on medical research because, being altruistic, it’s not normally as self-interested as this emotional pitch. But maybe it should be? Helping private donors figure out which medical research to fund seems like an important problem?
The bit about catheterization made me laugh out loud
Biologist here. I work on plant biology. This won't help out anyone's medical trajectory. But it is most definitely biology. I think you are talking about medicine, which is related but not equal to biology. You could be just as mystified as why any one would work on plants, that's fine. But it is part of biology. By the way, who is the artist of the painting at the top of the post?
"The future, they have decided, will not come for me. I will stay pure. I will stay untouched."
this is meant to be ironic, but it really is how everything works, because if they could see the horror awaiting them, they would go insane, and civilization would not be possible
just as startup founders need to believe they will beat the odds and get rich, the modal person needs to believe they will stay, if not young forever (only kids think this, and the ones that become cynical too fast often just die), at least dignified and fulfilled; and that belief, sometimes buttressed by religious belief, keeps them going
"If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion."
EDIT: after ruminating on this more, the worst case might be succeeding at significantly extending life (and even youth!) but being too poor to afford it, or being too old to benefit from treatment, at least with God, everyone 'worthy' gets saved
I think about this a lot. How, as a software engineer, can I contribute in a medical or biotech field (neurotech seems particularly exciting to me)? Most of the things I read about biotech seem to come out of sci-fi novels
TLDR: work in biology so you don't piss yourself
Jokes aside, great stuff though, was a very enjoyable read!
Personally, I think biology is the most exciting of all the sciences in the 21st century. (A hundred years ago, it would have been physics.)
However, for someone who does not already find the field compelling, your essay is unconvincing. "You're telling me I should devote decades of my life working in a field I don't like just to make the last few months of my life somewhat less miserable?"
Everyone knows that death is inevitable and its approach often unpleasant. Choosing to live a happy, productive life in a field other than biology or medicine does not in any way amount to averting one's eyes from this fact.
You ask, "Because how else could they go on about their day? How else could they ignore what awaits them?" The answer is that obsessing over an inevitability which you cannot change is neither sane nor rational.
Anyone who loves biology should absolutely pursue it. But don't do it because you fear the pain of death.
you could simply work in a field of biology that seeks to change the ‘inevitable’ outcome
Biology concerns itself with empirical reality, not fantasy. Making end-of-life medicine less painful and traumatic is one thing; defeating death to achieve literal immortality is quite another. But neither is a worthwhile career focus if you don't love the subject.
>Making end-of-life medicine less painful and traumatic is one thing; defeating death to achieve literal immortality is quite another.
In the limit, it is literally the exact same thing
No it isn't. If there's a hard upper limit to the human lifespan, and empirical evidence to date indicates that there is, no improvements to end-of-life palliative care will change that.
(They are people like Bryan Johnson trying to truly conquer death, and various anti-aging scientists, but their approach is unrelated to palliative care.)