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Science and Medicine
PHYSICIAN, DOWNSIZE THYSELF
Med School Grapples with Fiscal Challenges
By Jeffrey Davis
S A YOUNG POSTDOCTORAL researcher at Northwestern
University in the 1960s, Eugene Bauer had his eyes happily trained on tadpoles
exploring the role that certain enzymes played in the complex process of
their metamorphosis.
Eugene Bauer sees a diamond in the rough
Bauers study of those enzymes, backed by 21 years of federal
funding, has led to
breakthrough therapies for a potentially lethal skin disease and now appears to
apply directly to other disorders, including basal cell cancer.
Thirty years later, as dean of Stanfords Medical School, the soft-spoken
54-year-old is reminded powerfully of the value of his early experience
and a research environment that nurtured such far-reaching trajectories for
scientific discovery. For those who think about science and the connection
among
all organisms, from bacteria all the way to humans, Bauer says eagerly,
it was
a perfect example of what medical education had to offer curious minds.
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