The rapid spread of the Sars virus has been matched by the speed with which scientists around the world have identified it, researched its causes, worked on tests to diagnose it, and circulated their findings on the internet. Never before has knowledge about an epidemic been so swiftly shared.

It would be pleasing to record that Britain has been in the forefront of this research. Pleasing, but far-fetched. When the story of the Sars outbreak is finally recorded, our contribution is likely to be accorded little more than a footnote. Once again, facing a major epidemic, we seem to be playing catch-up. As one scientist put it bluntly to me yesterday: “When the s*** hits the fan we cope, but are we well-prepared? The quick answer is, ‘No’.”

This contrasts starkly with the resources and expertise that have been thrown into the battle elsewhere. Canada, the United States, Germany and the Netherlands have been major contributors. The initial research on the outbreak carried out in Hong Kong has been described by one British scientist as “absolutely amazing”.

The work done by Professor Ab Osterhaus at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam was critical in identifying the virus that causes the disease. In Canada, a huge laboratory has been turned over to a study of the virus, with 24 scientists working around the clock. Within ten days of receiving the necessary data, the Bernard-Nocht Institute in Hamburg had mapped the virus’s entire genome, with its sequence of 29,736 nucleotides, and placed it on the World Health Organisation website.

What this means is that scientists in any laboratory now have access to information that allows them to replicate parts of the virus’s DNA and carry out their own research. The agent causing Sars has been conclusively identified as a hitherto unknown form of corona virus, and work is advanced on developing tests to detect its antibodies.

More information is being collected every day on how it spreads and where its origins lie. It is here that British scientists working for the Public Health Laboratory Service have contributed information on what other pathogens, or organisms, might have been involved.

But it would be pointless to pretend that our researchers are making the running. There is, of course, an excuse. Sars is not yet a British problem, and one might conclude that there is no urgency for Britain to develop expertise. You could not, however, make that claim for two previous epidemics — BSE and foot-and-mouth. In both cases, Britain was in the eye of the storm. Yet in both cases, the pioneering research is being done elsewhere.

When contracts were announced recently for laboratories to develop an international test for BSE, four countries put in bids. One was eliminated — the British. As a result the work is being done in Switzerland, Ireland and France. Equally, despite all the assurances given by the Government that research on a vaccine for foot-and-mouth was being vigorously pursued, the key development work is being done in the United States.

As James Irvine, a veterinary expert and consultant, whose Land-Care organisation charts the impact of British science on the environment, puts it: “We’ve been through the pain, but have not benefited from the gain.” He says that the depressing aspect of the BSE example was that the British bid was eliminated, not because of a European stitch-up, but because it failed to reach required standards. Yet we had more first-hand experience of the disease than anyone else.

It is hard to explain this apparent erosion of Britain’s reputation for cutting-edge research and, of course, it is by no means a uniform picture. In some areas, particularly molecular genetics, important work is being done. But immunology, the combating of infectious diseases, has suffered, just at the point where it is becoming a critical science. Those who remember its heyday, when funds were almost unlimited, cannot believe the severity of the cutbacks. They argue that there is now a short-term approach, with specific projects winning funds in a highly competitive environment, but with no great encouragement for long-term research, training or lifetime careers.

Some date the decline back to the Thatcher era, when opinion turned against top-heavy government-funded institutions, in favour of smaller, privately funded laboratories. But the switch was not properly thought through, and somewhere along the line we fell between the public and the private stools. Some private labs, which are doing innovative research, report that there is still a fatal resistance to their work. One virologist to whom I spoke said that when he rang a major NHS children’s hospital recently, offering to carry out some basic testing, he was met with outrage. “You’ve no right to contact us,” he was told.

At the other end of the scale, the size and resources of publicly funded research facilities no longer match their equivalents in the US, Canada, the Netherlands or Germany. The Public Health Laboratory Service, now being subsumed into the new Health Protection Agency (HPA), operates from one floor in Colindale, North London, yet it is expected to deal with a range of infectious diseases, such as the current outbreak of avian influenza, Lassa fever, ebola and the threat of bioterrorism.

The Government has laid all these problems at the door of the HPA, which faces the massive task of rebuilding our research base. It has one great advantage – its chairman is a canny Scot, Sir William Stewart, a former President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Cabinet. As a distinguished biologist, he will be only too aware of the magnitude of the task.

But unless the Government is prepared to give scientists the backing they need, it will be a long time before Britain can again take its place in the front ranks of medical science.

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