Straight talk from... Colin Blakemore

After four years at the helm of Britain's Medical Research Council (MRC), which governs a £530-million research budget, Colin Blakemore is stepping down. As Nature Medicine went to press, a successor had not been formally announced. Here Blakemore talks about his tenure at the agency, the future of British medical research and the community's fears over the council's new 'translational' agenda, proposed by the government's 2006 Cooksey Review, which recommends shifting the focus to more applied research.