Scott Gottlieb Quotes

We must always remember that all medical interventions have risk, and very little can be asserted with 100 percent certainty.

In medicine, there is always a balance between risk and benefit.

I was always taught at medical school that you should never do a test unless you could do something with the result.

While I am prepared to look at all options and to think 'outside the box' for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

My son, who's on the spectrum is a very rigid thinker. He needs clear-cut definitions of right and wrong. Anything hazy or gray confuses him. For instance, if I try to get him to see that a friend behaved badly, he'll often get upset with me because a friend is a 'good guy' by definition, in his book.

This is the reality of intensive care: at any point, we are as apt to harm as we are to heal.

Good and bad are really arbitrary words when it comes to character.

It doesn't make sense that there is only one way of dealing with cancer.

Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty. It's also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong.

PubMed Central is vital for researchers and the public alike. Only through free access can everyone find out where the cutting edge of research lies. With access to the latest studies, patients and their families have a much-needed piece of the puzzle as they consider treatment options and potential outcomes.

At the time I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, my doctors told me that I had an incurable illness and they didn't know much about it.

There is no disease more conducive to clinical humility than aneurysm of the aorta.

If you're going to figure something out, study ethics. You can ask What's the answer? What's Right and Wrong? What I learned is that nobody knows the answer and there is no Right and Wrong. So I'm incapable of becoming a fundamentalist because there are no absolutes, there's always a what if.

We always want to find good and bad guys, and I don't believe in that.

Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

Everybody's a mix of good and bad choices that they make.

When you're the victim of the behavior, it's black and white; when you're the perpetrator, there are a million shades of gray.

Doctors' positions and recommendations about drugs, procedures, surgical interventions, health and nutrition are not always based on strong scientific evidence.

You can manage cancer. You don't have to be degraded by humiliating treatments and protocols. And in some cases, you can be cured of cancer.

Doctors and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.

When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simple.

If your doctor tells you you have a rare disease that he or she has never seen, if you've got an incurable cancer, boy, don't accept that. You know, go and get a second opinion.

Many children with cancer in the developing world can be cured. But without appropriate treatment, few survive.

I don't like movies that are morally simple.