Lewis Thomas Quotes

Advances in science and medical research and public health policies have meant that life expectancy for Australians is one of the highest in the world.

Cross pollination of fields, innovation in one stimulates revolutionary changes in another. All the instruments in a hospital which allow us observation of the human body without cutting you open were based on principles of physicists developed by physicists who had no interest in medicine. This is the way innovation moves from one field to another.

Why doesn't Apple stop for a year and make medical devices? When people talk about technology, that's where I start to get a little hot under the collar because I know that it's the key to solving some of the world's biggest problems. Having a faster, thinner telephone is not one of the world's biggest problems.

To do health care was a noble, good thing, and it will help America dramatically. I don't begrudge Barack Obama choosing it, even though if I were president, I might not have.

The systems approach to biology will be the dominant theme in medicine.

If I could time travel into the future, my first port of call would be the point where medical technology is at its best because, like most people on this planet, I have this aversion to dying.

Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.

My job is to stay alive until the medicine and research catch up.

America's doctors, nurses and medical researchers are the best in the world, but our health care system is broken.

America has the best doctors, the best nurses, the best hospitals, the best medical technology, the best medical breakthrough medicines in the world. There is absolutely no reason we should not have in this country the best health care in the world.

In order to improve healthcare, we'll have to spend more on it, increase accountability and decentralize services, enforce standards and reinstate people's faith in it.

I learned the hard way how desperately primitive is the technology we have for monitoring the health of someone with a chronic illness.

Developments in medical technology have long been confined to procedural or pharmaceutical advances, while neglecting a most basic and essential component of medicine: patient information management.

My father said, 'You should do 'A Day in the Life of Medicine.' A book about how the human race wants to heal itself in new ways.

The whole imposing edifice of modern medicine is like the celebrated tower of Pisa - slightly off balance.

St. Louis has always been a great center for medicine. It has been a leader in the nation since the early part of the 20th century. Along with that, we've been a leader in medical science and biomedical science and innovation in medicine.

Researchers probably never anticipated when they started smashing atoms and protons in our large accelerators that their science their very basic research on matter would eventually give us remarkable life-saving technology.

Health-care policy is choked by an aristocracy of special interests. If we don't take these groups on and rein in costs, health care will continue to bleed our economy white.

For all the advances in medicine, there is still no cure for the common birthday.

How can we continue to condone a system which heals those who can pay but says to hell with those who can't.

Doctors can do almost anything nowadays, can't they, unless they kill you while they're trying to cure you.

By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It’s not even close.

Until recently, there was more information technology in your average grocery store than in your doctor’s office.

… modern civilization … enables us to cure sickness on a huge scale and to destroy each other on a huge scale. It enables us to liberate each other on a huge scale and to tyrannize each other on a huge scale…. There is no evidence of any continuous upward line of social progress

In 1955, Cuba had a life expectancy of 59.5 years, shorter than Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay… In 1985 the average Cuban could expect to live until the age of 75, longer than anyone else in Latin America and just short of the average American (75.9 years). Cuba’s children were the best fed and the level of literacy was the highest [in Latin America].