Healing U.S. Health Care

Today's profound advances in biomedical research may never be effectively transformed into better health care for society, unless steps are taken immediately to restore the American health system, according to Floyd E. Bloom, a physician-scientist and board chairman for AAAS. In an essay published 13 June in Science, based on his Presidential Lecture at the 2003 AAAS Annual Meeting, Bloom analyzes the state of the American health care system and describes how events of the 20th century have produced a system that cannot incorporate or implement new knowledge for the diagnosis or treatment of disease. Bloom calls for a New National Consensus to Restore the American Health System, enabled by Commission from the President elected by the 2004 ballot. To benefit from current and future biomedical discoveries, the nation must create a translational health system in which research discoveries flow to clinical trials to best-practice standards of care in the clinic, Bloom concludes. "We must restore a system that can welcome the new insights and exploit them," says Bloom.

Read Bloom's call-to-arms for the U.S. health care system.

Read the news release on Bloom's 2003 AAAS Annual Meeting lecture.

—Daniel Kane

13 June 2003