Seth Berkley Quotes

The health of the people is of supreme importance. All measures looking to their protection against the spread of contagious diseases and to the increase of our sanitary knowledge for such purposes deserve attention of Congress.

Contagious and infectious diseases have been largely overcome.

It's now evident that public health is part of national security.

Infectious diseases have become less prominent as causes of death and disability in regions of improved sanitation and adequate supplies of antibiotics.

Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.

The advent of AIDS circa 1980 has really forced medicine and biology to take enormous steps just for sheer survival. The same way war propels hard technology, AIDS has created wartime conditions in the field of biology that will have all sorts of spin-offs.

Herd immunity is, it turns out, not incredibly easy to understand. It took me quite a bit of reading before I fully grasped it. But understanding herd immunity is essential to understanding why we vaccinate the way we do.

I think the problem with the country is that we operate on a sickness model, not a wellness model... Basically, we treat people who become ill. What we don't do is do a very good job in keeping them healthy in the first place...

The campaign of sanitation in our colonies has wiped out many epidemic diseases and reduced to a minimum the hotbeds of infection. Our colonies can boast of sanitary and hygienic measures similar to those existing in the most progressive countries.

As director of the CDC, one of the best parts of my job is announcing good news.

Our progress against malaria is impressive. But vigilance remains a critical ingredient to protect the health of all people.

I'm for increased funding for the Centers for Disease Control.

Over and over, nature shows that it's a really tough adversary. That's why it's important that we invest in laboratories, disease detectives, research, mosquito control, the public health system around the world to find, stop, track, prevent health threats.

At CDC, we work 24/7 to save lives and protect people.

Over the years, I have worked on programs in Africa and around the globe to combat malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV. I have been witness to incredible progress in these fights.

I think Tom Frieden, the CDC director, is a good man, is a good doctor and, I think, basically has done a good job.

New vaccines are being developed all the time, which could save many more lives and dramatically improve people's health. And this goes beyond the traditional burden of childhood infectious diseases.

Science is beginning to catch up with global health problems.

There's no one place a virus goes to die - but that doesn't make its demise any less a public health victory. Throughout human history, viral diseases have had their way with us, and for just as long, we have hunted them down and done our best to wipe them out.

You don't have to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the country if you have a couple of cases of smallpox cropping up.

I think we should put the same weight now on the co-factors as we have on HIV.

For years, many public health campaigns that aimed at changing habits have been failures.

I definitely want to study global health. Right now I'm working on all the prerequisite core curriculum that Columbia has. So getting all of that out of the way. And I definitely want to pursue something along the lines of public health.

As medical research continues and technology enables new breakthroughs, there will be a day when malaria and most all major deadly diseases are eradicated on Earth.

It's clear that prevention will never be sufficient. That's why we need a vaccine that will be safe.