The Initiative on Human Health
The James H. Clark Center, which opened in 2003, features curving architecture, transparent walls and open laboratory spaces that help to foster the interdisciplinary Bio-X research that takes place there.
Progress in improving human health in the last 100 years has been astonishing—the invention of radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer, the mapping of the human genome, the first human heart transplant, among others. But, the issues we face today have increased in complexity and magnitude—the emergence of avian flu and new bacterial viruses, the limitations of known antibiotic therapies, the ongoing challenges of chronic disease, and autoimmune disease, for example. Progress in the next 100 years will require marshalling the expertise of researchers from a variety of disciplines and expediting the translation of discoveries from the laboratory to the patient's bedside. These are the goals behind Stanford's Initiative on Human Health.
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"To fulfill our potential for innovation and leadership, we must set a bold agenda, one that embraces the excitement of a grand vision in which disease-based discovery translates into improved health care. To achieve that goal we should aspire to a community in which scientists, physician-scientists and scholars, and certainly students are focused on this task as its highest priority."
— Paul Berg, Awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
The Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor of Cancer Research, Emeritus.
Director emeritus, the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine
