BMJ  2008;336:341-342 (16 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39489.505208.80

Editorials

Stronger European medical research

Needs investment in people, not simply more money

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

How can Europe produce medical research that will best increase its citizens’ health and its countries’ wealth? This debate will run on and on, of course, but a new white paper from the European Medical Research Councils (EMRC) provides important evidence on funding and conducting effective, relevant, and world beating research (box 1).1 Summing up the white paper in Frankfurt last month, Professor Liselotte Højgaard, EMRC chair, quoted British physiologist Ernest Starling’s advice to the British Research Council in the 1920s, "get the best of men, give them the equipment you can afford, and leave them alone."


  • Implementation of best practice for funding and performing medical research—with distribution of funding based on excellence and evaluated by peer review
  • Strengthened collaboration and coordination of medical research in Europe through the EMRC and its membership organisations, via the European Commission, the European Research Council, and the learned medical societies
  • Revision of European . . . [Full text of this article]


Trish Groves, deputy editor

1 BMJ

tgroves@bmj.com


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