[bonsai_spool]

> Yes, the biomedical world needs to go through the same boom that tech went through in the last 20 years.

Why do you think that isn’t happening? So many comments here make broad claims about fields where the poster isn’t familiar. Being a programmer does not make one knowledgeable about other specialized fields

[sodafountan]

I agree that being a programmer doesn't make you an expert at everything, but OP brought up a good point. Tech is a lot more accessible than other fields. It would be nice if I could pivot into other fields as easily as someone could pivot into tech.

Aside from going to college for many years, there's really no other way to break into the medical field. College is expensive and quite daunting to many (myself included), which is a shame because I'd really like to contribute more to humanity than moving pixels around on a screen and helping businesses with their data problems.

[bonsai_spool]

The reason you can ‘pivot’ into tech is because you’re able to run programs and see their output on your own device.

You can do some data-oriented research at home, though you’d also have a lot of reading to do first.

Medicine requires seeing patients and their ailments and their recovery - not something we’ll ever be able to simulate well (for many reasons).

You can get a good medical education all online, but nobody will accept you’re not having seen patients

[clark_dent]

Biomedical research in the US has taken an absolute nose-dive several times over the past decade or two. This was my field for the past 20 years, so I'm fairly familiar.

It requires enormous capital investment and a very, very long time to turn out meaningful results, so it's only available to those with corporate-depth pockets or government subsidies. It also requires a broad and deep skill set.

With the FDA, USDA, NIH, CDC and DoEd all being gutted, the subsidies are gone. Academia can no longer support a huge swath of biomedical research.

[bonsai_spool]

> US has taken an absolute nose-dive several times over the past decade or two

This is also my field... and if the nose-dive is what has delivered in these past two decades RNA-seq, induced pluripotent stem cell generation, CRISPR-mediated genome therapies, CAR-T therapy, single-cell RNA and DNA profiling, spatial transcriptomics, targeted GLP- and incretin-modulation therapies? Then that's a wonderful nosedive.

The capital investment has always been true if you want to do R1 research. But you don't have to do that at all! There's also Oxford Nanopore, tons of open data through NCBI and other resources, more open papers than ever.

> It also requires a broad and deep skill set.

Yes. Like anything, being good takes time.

> Academia can no longer support a huge swath of biomedical research.

Maybe. I think there will be money for things that affect the rich (incurable cancer, longevity) and for things that are sexy to the unsophisticated (CZI Biohub 'OpenCell'). But there is money in this, so I don't think academia (to wit, people who know how to do research) will go away, just will change.

[JRandomHacker42]

> Being a programmer does not make one knowledgeable about other specialized fields

If I could make every HN user read this before commenting on literally any article...