There's another side to that also. There are not enough jobs
for graduate students coming along. There's no way that even
a third of them will get jobs in academia. So, what are we preparing
them for--massive disappointment? We thought that with knowledge
transfer we could provide some avenues for students to go on
to maybe become journalists or become important in public policy
or do something in a pharmaceutical company.
AE: Recently in the Exchange professors from the diverse fields
of business and theology, Jadish Sheth an Luke Johnson both grounded
part of their contention for a public role for academics in the
extension of our teaching mission. In your field, how do you
conceive the relation between public scholarship between the
students you see in your class and lab?
TI: They're the vector for the public dissemination of knowledge
and for interdisciplinary work. Look, old folks like me are
not going drop what we're doing and go over to someone else's
lab and do experiments in areas we know nothing about. It's
the students who are going to make the difference. Graduate
students, post-docs, occasionally undergraduate students, who
will take something from my lab and go down the hall and pull
us together. That's the only way this will happen. That's where
the funds are all going--to the students and the postdocs, and
it has to be that way.
AE: As the first researcher to show serotonan to be useful in
treating obsessive-compulsive disorder, how do you respond to
the criticism that the medical model of mental illness has disproportionate
sway today largely because of the cheapness of prescribing drugs
as opposed to talk therapies?
TI: I think many people who are anti-medication are well-intentioned
but destructive. Many mental disorders are chronic and treatable,
just as other illnesses are, like diabetes, for instance. To
not use every technique you can is a disservice. That not to
say medication is the full treatment. With chronic disorders,
there are often lots of secondary factors, lifestyle factors,
again diabetes is a good example. The opportunity to talk with
a therapist can be very helpful. With managed care, people are
just being pushed to give pills, though. And I wouldn't do
that for mental illness, just as I wouldn't do that for diabetes.
AE: The nineties has been called "the decade of the brain."
What would you like to name the first decade of the new millennium?
TI: I'd call it the "decade of the genome." The basic mapping of the human genome is due to be finished ahead of schedule, probably by late 2000. But this won't be that helpful. It's like having the ABCs. Then we'll have to try to understand the essays, to make meanings. That's called functional genomics. Figuring out what genes do is very complicated, and its the challenge of the next decade. If we had to point to one area of research for the Center's mission, it'd be functional genomics.
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