It was an eventful year to be sure, but what most affected your life?
Here's what some of you had to say:
The identification of a new strain of extremely or extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) serves as a ‘wake up call' for the need for new treatment options which are not drug resistant, and that can shorten dramatically the more-than-six-month treatment regimen.
MARIA FREIRE, Global Alliance for TB Drug Development
The biggest event in biomedical science this year may be the flat budgeting of the NIH by both Congress and the administration. Biomedical research seems to have lost its previously firm support from politicians which will hamstring innovative work in the future. DAVID BALTIMORE, California Institute of Technology By far, the most important development in 2006 in the tobacco field was the California Environmental Protection Agency's determination that secondhand smoke (and smoking) cause breast cancer in younger women.
STAN GLANTZ, University of California in San Francisco
The assault on the integrity of science took the form of fraud (involving stem cell research in South Korea), misrepresentation of data for profit and the increasing tendency for scientists to ‘sign on' as authors of papers from industry partners with whom they have a financial relationship. MICHAEL SCHWARTZ, University of Washington The National Academy of Sciences report on men and women in science showed that science will only be as good as the scientists who do it and, to do it optimally, we need to attract both men and women into science, train them, support them, and keep them there - and at every level.
ELLEN VITETTA, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center