While you were in the lab inhaling chemicals the culture of medicine changed and your work is not so relevant anymore.  I imagine that is the fear driving the banshee cries for credentials when solid queries from the layman arise about the nature of healing and the resources allocated for it.
Where the relationships happen, where decisions are made, where people get hurt or get healed, is in the prescribers office and the pharmacy counter and with family....not so much in the lab.
Knuckle dragging chest thumping scientists who refuse to use their minds instead to defend burning towers and crumbling institutions--so last century.