Almost $700 million in public money has been spent to bring to Florida both Max Planck and Scripps Florida. The gamble was made by the Jeb Bush administration, which believed that biotechnology would transform the economy of the area and provide the world with new cures for deadly diseases.
The value of this expensive bet with public money is to go on display this week, with the Max Planck Society from Germany marking the formal opening of its very first and so far only branch in the United States; this is being highlighted by a ribbon cutting ceremony, which is being staged tomorrow.
Surrounded by both preferred parking for fuel efficient vehicles and native plants, the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience has been in progress for six years, holding exceptional tools inside it such as neuroscientist David Fitzpatrick's extraordinarily precise two-photon microscope and eight other research group leaders who are focused on answering fundamental questions regarding the operation of the human brain.
Fitzpatrick believes that the expansion of human knowledge should be seen as being one measure of return on the investment of taxpayers. Billions of dollars have so far been spent studying such illnesses as Alzheimer's disease and on testing drug candidates; however, science is still uncertain about what causes the death of brain cells. Fitzpatrick believes that, with so many brain disorders still being so poorly understood, the solution lies in going back to basics to form an understanding of how a healthy brain works in the first place.
"It's important to be straightforward with people and make them understand how little we know about fundamental brain organization," he points out candidly. "Insight must precede application."
