Many scientists in fields with biomedical applications describe a point in their education where they considered medicine as a potential career path. For those who ultimately decided to pursue a PhD instead, the reasons for not choosing medicine are many and varied. Jim Hayward of Applied DNA Sciences describes his decision-making process, which had to do with how he imagined the impact of his future work: “I did consider med school. I took a bunch of med school courses as a graduate student. I thought I could have a bigger influence on the science than in treating individual people. At that stage of my life, I didn’t see medicine as a research career, but as a clinical career. Since then, of course, I’ve gotten to know many research-directed clinicians. It was probably a wrong decision, but saved me a lot of time.” [laughs]
