International coordination of biomedical research

Recent efforts at international coordination in biomedical research have taken place at two levels. At the level of the working clinician and scientist, European regionalism has become increasingly manifest in such organizations as the European Society for Clinical Investigation, the European Organization for Research into the Treatment of Cancer, the European Molecular Biology Organization and many others. These have developed largely, though not entirely, independently of government funding. At the level of science policy, i.e. of bodies supporting biomedical research mainly from public funds, the major developments have been the Comité de la Recherche Médicale of the European Community and the much wider association of European Medical Research Councils, based on the whole of Western Europe; in October 1975 the latter group became incorporated into the new European Science Foundation as the first Standing Committee of that body. Wider, interregional, cooperation presents greater problems, though there have been some modest successes, and the multinational drive on research into six of the major health problems of the Third World now being proposed by WHO holds further promise for the future.