David Gurwitz Quotes

Dual use research of concern (DURC) is research that, based on current understanding, can be reasonably anticipated to provide knowledge, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied by others to pose a threat to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, or materiel

My bacteria glow in the dark - no human being doesn't like that.

If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees.

Our increasing ability to alter our biology and open up the processes of life is now fueling a new cultural war.

Those are the things that, in the wrong hands - and certainly in our war on terrorism we also must attack proliferation and those nations that proliferate with chemical, biological and nuclear type devices, because that can cause the most catastrophic results.

There are no weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq. There may be some isolated weapons, though I doubt even that, but no programs as you and I would think of them.

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you is facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails. Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between one hundred and five hundred tons of chemical weapons agent...He remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons.

… biologists are now going to be directing evolution.

The Senate is rushing to vote on whether to declare war on Iraq without pausing to ask why. Why is war being dealt with not as a last resort but as a first resort?

It is not delusional for Pakistan to fear that the United States is interested in de-nuking them. It is prudent paranoia.

The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available. ... Therefore, we must expect that if another war — a serious war — breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form.

… adopt and enforce appropriate, effective laws which prohibit any non-state actor to manufacture, acquire, possess, develop, transport, transfer, ot use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery …. develop and maintain appropriate, effective border controls and law enforcement efforts …

The rise of terrorism and unconventional weapons will end the relative invulnerability of the U. S. homeland …. A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter of a century.

Biological terrorism poses the ultimate asymmetric threat but it should be considered in the same class as the nuclear threat.

Iraq has WMDs. It is not something we think, it is something we know. Iraq has itself admitted that it has had mustard gas, nerve gas, anthrax, but Saddam won't disclose. He won't tell us where and how these weapons have been destroyed. We know this from the UN inspectors, so there is no doubt in my mind.

As the scientific community has started debating “human-directed evolution” the biosecurity establishment remains behind the curve.

Scientists and security experts will never come to a consensus about the risks of dual-use research in synthetic biology..

We oppose the use of chemical weapons no matter who uses them and against whom they are used.

In chemicals, Synthetic Genomics is one of my real loves.

There is an enormous amount of evidence that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, is doing his best to develop more lethal weapons, and funds and supports terrorism.

Biology is now accelerating at a pace faster than Moore's Law.

Printing novel DNA might open the way to achievements once only conceivable in science fiction: designer bacteria that can produce new chemicals, such as more efficient fuels, or synthetic versions of our cells that make us resistant to the effects of radiation.

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.

Microbes such as bacteria and yeast use enzymes to make fuels from biomass. We use directed evolution to perfect those enzymes and make new fuels efficiently.

The potential for synthetic biology and biotechnology is vast; we all have an opportunity to create the future together.