Folke Henschen Quotes

Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.

Smallpox is the only human infectious disease ever eradicated by science.

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

When you're dealing with new and emerging diseases, you have no idea and you can't predict in advance what would happen.

The world can now maintain an acute infection in a way that is unprecedented in the history of life on our planet.

Global pandemics---whether naturally occurring or intentionally spread---pose a greater threat than most man-made weapons of mass destruction.

Microbial foes have the advantage of an extraordinary capacity to rapidly reproduce and adapt, thereby propagating themselves even in the face of impressive advances in public health and the availability of countermeasures such as diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. This inherent adaptability of microbes can only be matched with the continual application of wit and technological capability. The best defense for the human species against elimination by the ever-evolving waves of microbial pathogens are public health measures coordinated with biomedical research that will continue to provide innovative tools to counterbalance these endless microbial challenges. Ultimately, if medical science continues to fight the microbial foes to a draw, as has occurred for much of the past century, humanity will have won.

Pandemics happen. They have happened three times in the last 100 years…. They change the politics, the culture, the society. Pandemics do that …. Pandemics reshape history …. The likelihood of a pandemic is almost certain…. The consequences are worldwide.

Contagious and infectious diseases have been largely overcome.

Unfortunately, infectious diseases don’t pay much attention to budget cycles.

More people in the world have died in such a short time of plague than has been heard or seen since the beginning of time …. Whoever touched the sick and dead was immediately infected and died …. That pestilence deprived of human inhabitants villages and cities so that there was scarcely found a man to dwell therein.

Think about all kinds of infectious diseases, like mumps or measles or chicken pox. When a virgin population encountered those pathogens, it ravaged the population, and now they're childhood diseases, and eventually they won't even be that. That's our relationship with bacteria, going through time.

Infectious disease exists at this intersection between real science, medicine, public health, social policy, and human conflict. There's a tendency of people to try and make a group out of those who have the disease. It makes people who don't have the disease feel safer.

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.

Pandemics happen. When they do, they change the world.

Avian flu, which has already killed 50 people, is only a mutation away from being transmissible from person to person. We have no immunity, no vaccines, and no cure. It is imperative that we strengthen our domestic vaccine supply, expand legal protections, encourage collaboration between the public and private sectors, and advance research and development. These initiatives will help protect us from a deadly viral outbreak that experts warn could come to our shores any day.

The spread of the disease is under control. What I worry about is the spread of fear of the disease is not under control.

I've had to confront a lot of pandemics and infectious diseases around the globe.

As a physician for over 30 years, I am well aware of the dangers infectious diseases pose.

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.

We've all learned about this disease since it was first discovered several years ago in Europe. And so I think we've learned from the European experience.

A matter that seems to be very clear in terms of the alternative view, is what do you expect to happen in Africa with regard to immune systems, where people are poor, subject to repeat infections and all of that. Surely you would expect their immune systems to collapse.

We have grown accustomed to the wonders of clean water, indoor plumbing, laser surgery, genetic engineering, artificial joints, replacement body parts, and the much longer lives that accompany them. Yet we should remember that the vast majority of humans ever born died before the age of 10 from an infectious disease.

Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously, precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world.

Epidemics follow patterns because diseases follow patterns. Viruses spread; they reproduce; they die.