Apart from the so-called ‘counter-insurgency war’ that’s will be waged on Singapore blogosphere, a different kind of war is emerging elsewhere. There has been quite a war of words between AP Lee Weiling and Mr Philip Yeo, and this war is interesting because it pits a member of the the Lee family against a top civil servant. In other words, it’s a clash of the titans.

I am no expert in the biomedical sciences, but from the little that I gather through my own research and readings, I think that both AP Lee and Mr Yeo are both correct given their individual perspectives. The problem really is, where do we want go?

From Mr Yeo’s perspective, the economy is paramount. He was tasked with the job of building up another pillar of Singapore’s economy to keep the economy going strong, especially when we are losing competitive in areas like electronics. It is therefore not surprising that Mr Yeo’s strategy is to focus on the bottomline. Singapore’s been extremely successful at luring big pharmaceuticals to come into Singapore, and over the next few years, we can expect more jobs to be created and more contributions to the economy by the pharmaceuticals sector.

Also, when I look at the kinds of brand name researchers that has been headhunted by A*Star, I cannot help but think that economics was one of the main reason these researchers were picked to be courted to come to Singapore. The top researchers in the fields of heart, cancer and stem cell research were very agressively courted. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that products generated from these research are potentially lucrative, especially when the patients who require and can afford drugs/pharmaceutical products for these areas are likely to be in first world countries.

This is perhaps the sticking point with AP Lee. She thinks that it is very weird for Singapore to venture into these areas when we do not have natural advantage in doing research in these areas. For example, she pointed out that 5% of ethnic Chinese Singaporeans are Hepatitis B carriers. This would make Singapore an excellent area for research on hepatitis. She is also of the opinion that since Singapore is predominantly Asian, it would make more sense to research diseases that seem to affect Asians more, for the simple reason that the pool of research subjects is plentiful here.

From a scientific perspective, her logic is not flawed. In fact, there’s nothing to argue about. The problem is, promotion of the biomedical sciences research in Singapore was not because of a true desire for doing research for the better good of society, but rather, it was driven by economic necessity. From an economics point of view, it is a no brainer to pick between say, Hepatitis B research and heart disease research. It is definitely more potentially lucrative to do heart disease research because the places with highest incidences of heart diseases are generally developed countries, and more importantly, the people can afford expensive drugs. In contrast, places with low prevalence of hepatitis B are most of North America, Australia and most of Western Europe.

As far as the clash goes, I don’t foresee AP Lee being able to win the battle. Biomedical sciences in Singapore is more for economic gain than true research. From the perspective of a researcher, this is indeed sad but unfortunately, this is Singapore, where pragmatism rules.