Consider the number of biotech patent filings coming out of China and India, and you will see beyond doubt that the life sciences industries have matured, increasing competition for both human and technological resources. In the US and Europe, foreign postdocs are leaving the Pfizers and Mercks of the world to return to their countries of origin.

Clinical trials are now planned and conducted worldwide, particularly in China and India, where costs are 10 percent of what they are in the US or Europe. For national regulatory agencies this represents a significant challenge, particularly against the backdrop of the rising costs of bringing new medicines to market. Can duplicative regulatory requirements for approving new drugs be eliminated, without compromising safety?

Medical philanthropy and medical advocacy with a global focus is also changing the way medical research is conducted. The Gates Foundation, for example, has huge financial resources of “patient” capital - money whose returns are measured in terms of improvements in public health, not earnings per share. Gates resources are being directed toward solving global health issues, on which the foundation now spends about 60 percent of its funds. While the focus is on malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis, the spin-off of innovation - potential therapies and vaccines - could be equivalent to the advances in IT, electronics, and materials science that resulted from NASA’s space research program.

The global nature of R&D means players will be coming to the field with different cultural backgrounds and widely divergent values. In the West, the church has performed a deft slight of hand in recasting questions about stem cells into a debate over when life begins, a debate that has impeded research and consumed endless hours of political discussion. But these ethical concerns are far from universal. I gave a speech in Moscow not long ago, and if I had become critically ill while visiting that city, Russian doctors might have begun shooting me up with stem cells immediately.

They are using the techniques clinically now to advance research, while we are still debating the spiritual dimensions of blastocysts. Then again, for my part as a venture capitalist, and passionate as I am about stem cells, I have yet to invest in any stem cell company. Much of the science is still too far away from products and markets.

Given the misguided debate in the US between 21st-century science and 1st-century theology, what can we expect when presented with the real issues - cell farms, women producing eggs for experimentation, the “human” rights of robots, human chimeras, and so on?

Which brings us back to the idea of the life sciences becoming the 21st century’s “theory of everything.” A few years ago, naturalist E.O. Wilson resuscitated the antique word “consilience” as the title and theme for his book about the unity of all knowledge. As biology converges with issues of law, ethics, religion, secular values, economic growth, and global competitiveness, we will truly see it defining and shaping more and more of how our lives are lived.

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