Manhattan Projects for Preventive Medicine

In this opinion article, we argue that the requisite scientific knowledge and technological capabilities to elucidate the fundamental causes of chronic diseases—and to develop strategies for their prevention, reversal, and cure—already exist today. However, to implement this vision, a transformative shift in the scientific approach is required ( Figure 1 ). We advocate for a new way to conduct science, inspired by the organizational structure, interdisciplinary synergy, and operational excellence of the Manhattan Project (not its goal of developing a weapon). This model will overcome the current fragmentation of the scientific efforts, which are dispersed across tens of thousands of isolated projects, each with distinct objectives, datasets, methodologies, and analyses. It will also not be distracted and disoriented by the current incentive structure in academic research, which focuses on publications. By adopting the collaborative and goal-oriented framework of the Manhattan Project, humanity can refocus the scientific efforts to effectively confront and consign chronic diseases to the annals of history.