Between clinical medicine and the laboratory: medical research funding in France from 1945 to the present.

By focusing on funding methods, this paper considers the way in which medical research eventually led to the science-based medicine that is prevalent in France today. This process seems to have taken place in three stages during the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1940s and 1950s, two major events occurred. The first was the creation of a national health insurance fund in France, which opened up new reasons for, and ways of, funding medical research. The second was the development of antibiotics, which triggered a revival of clinical medicine. In the 1960s and 1970s, a proactive government science policy allowed the life sciences and medical research to come together in the wake of a burgeoning new science: molecular biology. Thus, in 1964, the creation of the National Health and Medical Research Institute (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale or INSERM), destined to "molecularize" medical research, was seen as the fulfillment of the government's ambitious research policy. Today, with medicine irreversibly embedded in scientific and technical rationality, health has become a major issue in modern societies. This paper therefore touches on some of the key features of biomedical research, including the revival of funding systems for clinical research and the development of a system of research grants that was made possible by patient organizations and the creation of new funding agencies.