Yes, indeed, and because of this, I'd suggest you not rule out bioinformatics before talking to someone who does it. I'm a bioinformatician, I love it, and hav

Yes, indeed, and because of this, I'd suggest you not rule out bioinformatics before talking to someone who does it. I'm a bioinformatician, I love it, and having both an M.D. and skill in programming would be a huge competitive advantage. Take a look at the work of Atul Butte, who is a M.D. that has got into bioinformatics at Stanford, and is very successful. It is true that until you reach high levels of the research hierarchy, (where salaries can be $250K+), the pay is not good. However, if you get into bioinformatics for industry, or do clinically-oriented startups using bioinformatics methods, you can do quite well. It is a career that combines the ability to use computer science to solve real-world biomedical problems with an environment of high intellectual freedom. To me, those things are worth the opportunity cost in pay. Also, I would not pay that much attention to "average" salaries as you can do better if you are exceptionally skilled, and your M.D. probably would also command some kind of premium. But I can easily see how I might think differently if I had a lot of student debt from pursuing an M.D.