ABSTRACT
The long-term benefits of basic medical research often appear to be an unaffordable luxury. The amount of money saved in direct health costs from the prevention of polio by the introduction of the Salk and then the Sabin vaccine is greater than the entire global expenditure on medical research. The National Health and Medical Research Council has developed a system whereby the final grading of research applications is done by a multidisciplinary committee after scrutinising reports from experts in the field of the application. In most developed countries, at least 2 per cent of the health-care budget is allocated to government-funded research. Basic medical research has proven itself to be cost effective. Major benefits to humanity have come from its application, and there remain important problems whose solution can only come from basic medical research. Epidemiology and public health policy both use the tools and knowledge that basic medical research provides; this illustrates their complementary relationship.
