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To the Editor.—
Dermatology offers tremendous career opportunities to pursue both research and patient care activities. The ability to allocate time spent between these two responsibilities is perceptibly greater in dermatology than in many other specialties. This is an aspect of dermatology that appeals to the prospective physician scientist.Currently, there is no National Institutes of Health or other funding specifically directed toward helping MD-PhDs resume research career development on the completion of clinical specialty training. For example, the MD-PhD is ordinarily ineligible for the Clinical Investigator Award designed for clinically trained individuals to develop into independent investigators. They are eligible for this award if they are doing postgraduate research in a field significantly different from their original thesis research. In effect, this discourages the application of previous training to dermatology. It would seem more appropriate to encourage continuation of their previous research background, such as immunology, biochemistry, or genetics,