Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Your genetics is not your destiny.
The best way to predict the future is to change it.
I always loved computers - it's something inside you.
I don't actually believe there's any such thing as privacy.
I like talking and walking. It's more productive than doing just one.
We know that there is a connection between our feelings and our brain.
Making new petroleum should be as simple and straightforward as brewing beer.
We might want to figure out what are the positive effects of autism - mild cases.
The recreation of Neanderthals would be mainly a question of societal risk avoidance.
I have a rule against saying something is impossible unless it violates laws of physics.
Reversal of ageing is high on my list of things to do, and not just because I'm getting old.
Trees are essentially growing chairs. There are lots of primates that sit and sleep in them.
You can't just hoard your ideas inside the ivory tower. You have to get them out into the world.
Terrorism is not a public health threat, relative to cancer and heart disease and malaria and so forth.
I am 3.8 percent Neanderthal. One of my ancestors mated with a Neanderthal, and I am not embarrassed by that.
It's all too easy to dismiss the future. People confuse what's impossible today with what's impossible tomorrow.
We have a love affair with the idea of the 'natural,' even though we, as a species, are about as unnatural as you can imagine.
I like to keep the median age in my lab low because they will indulge me in my dreams. They don't yet think things are impossible.
I would argue that we're not limited by actual DNA. You can re-create the ancient DNA by looking at the genomes of existing animals.
Letting the tundra melt is the equivalent to burning all of the forests in all of the world and their roots two and a half times over.
The rewards for biotechnology are tremendous - to solve disease, eliminate poverty, age gracefully. It sounds so much cooler than Facebook.
The goal of getting your genome done is not to tell you what you will die from, but it's how to learn how to take action to prevent disease.
A scenario is, everyone takes gene therapy - not just curing rare diseases like cystic fibrosis, but diseases that everyone has, like aging.
You can make pigs that are essentially much closer to being universal donors. If it works, their organs will be going into people like you and me.
At some point, someone will come up with an airtight argument as to why they should have a cloned child. At that point, cloning will be acceptable.
Most groups patent ways of using genetic discoveries as part of non-obvious diagnostic and therapeutic protocols and slightly or greatly altered genes.
The World Wide Web went from zero to millions of web pages in a few years. Many revolutions look irrelevant just before they change everything swiftly.
It sounds a little bit too arrogant, but I think I certainly have a working model for how I conduct my life, and it may or may not be a correct worldview.
You should have personalized genomics, personalized physiology, personalized medicine, where each person's different, and each body is an integrated whole.
Anytime you see somebody keeping a secret, that's symptomatic that something's wrong with the society around them. That means there's discrimination or worse.
What I really wanted was for everybody to have their genome and, ideally, everybody to share their genome, and for that, we needed to bring the price way down.
Genomics is a new idea. Like the PC, it's not obvious at first that anyone would want one. It's like, 'Hey, we've already got one genome, why do we need more?'
How do you get things out of your head, out of your lab, and into the world? If you're not part of the economic community, there's a chance... you'll fall behind.
Very often, as I wander through life, I'll get that old feeling that I've come back from the future, and I'm living in the past. And it's a really horrible feeling.
Someone younger at heart should replace you, and that should be you. I'm willing to. I'm willing to become younger. I try to reinvent myself every few years anyway.
If you get very fine, accurate, and inexpensive control over your genome, you can fundamentally change the kind of organism you are. You are extending human capacity.
My laboratory and my obsession is about safety and building/engineering safety. It's not just a matter of saying we want the world to be safer; we have to create technology.
I will make the argument that we are poorly adapted to our current environment. I mean, we did not evolve to sit all day and be exposed to giant amounts of really tasty food.
If we could take one of my skin cells and turn it into an embryo-like cell and turn it back into a skin cell, it has reset almost all of the developmental indications of age.
There are a few genetic traits that make people feel sorry for you, and there are some, like narcolepsy, at which people take personal offense unless you tell them in advance.
Our ancestors didn't need any genetic enhancements to be able to sit for twelve hours a day and eat fatty, sugary foods, but we need enhancements that handle that altered environment.
I have faith that science is a good thing. Seriously, I'd say that I am very much in awe of nature. In fact, I think to some extent, "awe" was a word that was almost invented for scientists.
I think something very simple that everybody can do is they can participate in medical research as subjects. Personal genome project, for example, will take on as many subjects as we can find.
Preventing ongoing extinction of elephants, rhinoceroses, and other threatened species is critically important. By all means, we must set priorities for allocating finite conservation resources.
I don't think it is about stalling or curing: it's about reversing. Curing gives you the impression of immortality. Stalling gives you the impression that you'll be 85 forever, which is not great.
There's a lot of faith expressed by scientists about science. It's kind of an act of faith that science is a good thing. We don't know that for sure. We may not know that millions of years from now.
If we go into space, we need enhancements that handle radiation and osteoporosis... or else we're dead. So what seems like an enhancement in one generation becomes life and death in another generation.
Faith is a very powerful force in the history of humanity. So I greatly respect different kinds of faith. Just as I think diversity is a really good thing genetically, it's also a good thing societally.
I'm a champion for personal differences. I have no sympathy for drug companies that can't figure out how to make personalized medicine. We could generalize that to 'All society should be much more personalized.'
The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of perishing. Therefore, the recreation of Neanderthals would be mainly a question of societal risk avoidance.