Welcome to the Ripple Effect, investing in life sciences, a podcast from GZero's Blue Circle Studios produced in partnership with Novartis.

I'm Dan Riskin, a biologist and science journalist, and I spend a lot of time trying to understand the hidden connections that drive our world.

In this series, we dive into the ways that research in the life sciences has surprising importance to geopolitics,

economics, and the resilience of societies to dealing with change. In the last episode, we

uncovered some fascinating links between health research and national security. We really saw how

government investment in life sciences does much more beyond advancing medicine.

And today, we're focusing on another one of those added benefits.

We're going to look at how investments in health science strengthen a country's economy

and provide competitive returns on investment to both private and public investors.

And let me show you what I mean with some numbers. Between 2007 and 2040, repetitive returns on investment to both private and public investors.

And let me show you what I mean with some numbers.

Between 2007 and 2022, $46 billion in government funding for global health research in the U.S.

stimulated $104 billion in added economic activity.

That's more than double.

And in addition to that, it created 600,000 U.S. jobs.

But despite those financial benefits, some countries are slipping behind, even some with traditionally strong life sciences sectors.

So today, I'm going to drill down on two fundamental questions. First, with all the different ways that government can invest, what is the purely fiscal argument for government investment in health care, strictly from the perspective of a return on investment? We know there are other

benefits like the medicines themselves or the national security interests that we learned about

in the last episode, but today we're going to put on our bean counting hats and look at the financial upsides for governments that invest in the life sciences.

And second, I want to talk about policy decisions that bring investments to one country over

another. If I'm an investor looking to put some of my money into health care research,

what factors are going to guide my decisions about which country I invest

...