Bill Gates Quotes

When we faced a possibility here in New York of chemical and biological attack, three days after September 11, I called in all of the experts, academic experts, Nobel Prize laureates, and doctors who had dealt with anthrax, doctors who had dealt with various forms of chemical and biological attack.

Bio-terrorism is a threat.

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

NIH biodefense research is ultimately directed toward the development of new and effective medical countermeasures, including vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics against potential bioterror agents.

Back from 2001 to 2003, I wrote multiple editorials for The Washington Post about biological warfare and pandemic preparedness - issues that were at the top of everyone's agenda in the wake of 9/11 and the brief anthrax scare. At the time, some very big investments were made into precisely those issues, especially into scientific research.

When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame. That terrible Nobody! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the world besides.

As a scientist in the field of biological warfare defense, I have never had any reservations whatsoever about helping the anthrax investigation in any way that I could.

When I was doing 'Executive Orders,' I talked about Ebola to people who know about infectious diseases and their use as weapons of war, and guys told me that these weapons are more psychological than physical.

Americans in all places and levels of government have begun to consider the areas where we need to prepare ourselves from future threats, including the latest weapon: bio-terror.

When there is an influenza threat, drop everything and focus on risks from influenza pandemics. When SARS spreads, focus on unknown respiratory diseases. This approach helps to quell public concern, but it's a hugely inefficient way to deal with future risks.

We've put huge resources into predicting tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes. HIV/AIDS is like an earthquake that's lasted 30 years and touched every country on the planet. We have such incredible capacity to think about the future, it's time we used it to predict biological threats. Otherwise we'll be blindsided again and again.

Now we must worry as much about hard-to-detect small-scale biological weapons producers as we do about the large-scale nuclear weapons programs

The lack of U. S. Capability to rapidly recognize, respond, and recover from a biological attack is the most significant failure identified in this report card. Especially troubling is the lack of priority given to the development of medical countermeasures … the vaccines and medicines that would be required to mitigate the consequences of an attack.

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

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

Climate change carries implications that stretch far beyond extreme weather, however. The effects on public health are far more alarming - and those have to be taken into account in order to calculate an accurate estimate of the costs of inaction.

The public health ramifications of our scandalous open borders are possibly even more dangerous and far-reaching than the economic and political consequences.

I advise everyone with plans to visit Brazil for the Olympics in Rio - to stay home. You'll be putting your life at risk here. This is without even speaking about the state of public hospitals and all the Brazilian political mess.

Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning.

Terrorism is not a public health threat, relative to cancer and heart disease and malaria and so forth.

A study of Disease-of Pestilences methodically prepared and deliberately launched upon man and beast-is certainly being pursue in the laboratories of more than one great country. Blight to destroy crops, Anthrax to slay horses and cattle, Plague to poison not armies but whole districts - such are the lines along which military science is remorselessly advancing.

Imagine the first discovery that one of these epidemics was man-made—the panic, the violence that would ensue. That’s where the end would come. A typhoon kills a few hundred people, does a few billion in damage, and what do we do?” Erskine interlocked his fingers. “We come together. We put the pieces back. But a terrorist’s bomb.” He frowned. “A terrorist’s bomb does the same damage, and it throws the world into turmoil.” He spread his hands apart like an explosion going off. “When there’s only God to blame, we forgive him. When it’s our fellow man, we must destroy him.

I've pretty much always used my positions as a bully pulpit. What that means is strongly advocating for the things I feel are really important. Gun violence, to me, is the highest-priority public-health issue, and I have to make sure Congress is aware of it, the American people are aware of it, the president is aware of it, and that we all begin together to develop policies to exterminate the disease - the epidemic, really - of gun violence.

In the 21st Century, the community of nations may see more and more of this very kind of threat that Iraq poses now - a rogue state with biological and chemical weapons. If we fail to respond, Saddam and all those who follow will believe that they can threaten the security of a vital region with impunity. But if we act now as one, we will send a clear message to would-be tyrants and terrorists that we will do what it takes to protect our security and our freedom in this new era.

Some of the old diseases that we think are gone - case in point, measles - are back, now that somebody has spread around, in a very wicked way, the idea that these inoculations were making children autistic. Now we're getting outbreaks that are killing children. The end result is, if you create a population that lacks immunity, and diseases are still there, you're going to get outbreaks and you're going to get death.