A friend of mine, a biomedical scientist with responsibilities for the future of one of the country's major research institutions, sent me a memorandum recently containing a set of questions about the application of biological science to medical problems.
Heading the list was the hardest and the most embarrass- ing: What are some examples, he asked, of the usefulness of the biological revolution itself, beginning with the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA in 1953 and culminating...