Mike Quigley Quotes

There is a cost to every decision, and whether or not you impose a public health order has costs to industry and the public.

The reason we need formal government guidance from the chief medical officer is to empower parents.

There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.

Frankly, health care and politics are 'inextricably intertwined.'

Government health care changes the relationship between the citizen and the state, and, in fact, I think it's an assault on citizenship.

I know the problem of obesity. I got to tell you, I think that's tepid. I just don't think the bully pulpit is going to be enough to sufficiently fight obesity. We're going to have to have incentives in here.

I've written important articles on prevention, on the concept of the preventive state, how the law is moving much more in an area of trying to prevent wrongs than trying to deal with them after they occur. That will be my academic/intellectual legacy.

To me, politics is an extension of what I do in medicine.

If a State has reliable scientific information that demonstrates that a warning is needed for a particular food, then in the interest of public health, it should share that information with the FDA and petition for a new national standard.

The role of government is to protect the public health.

Health is the single most difficult public policy that a Governor has to deal with.

The FDA serves a real purpose: To protect public health.

My experience in Ethiopia helped shape my vision for WHO. We need to promote evidence-based decision-making and awareness. Specifically, we need to advocate for research and development, champion and support global and regional coalitions, and strengthen national capacity.

Health care, whether I like it or not, is at the foundation of my public service.

People determine the laws. But I do wish they would pass laws that enhance health, not jeopardize it.

Are we going to be risk-averse about health care, education, child well-being, or are we going to set aside those attitudes, which we find in government all too often, and lead?

There are certain systems that I think are not working well - that's the regulatory system, the whole system of how we regulate chemicals in this country.

Policies I advanced as FDA commissioner aimed to get smokers off cigarettes and onto less-harmful forms of nicotine delivery.

The best way to alleviate the obesity "public health" crisis is to remove obesity from the realm of public health. It doesn't belong there. It's difficult to think of anything more private and of less public concern than what we choose to put into our bodies. It only becomes a public matter when we force the public to pay for the consequences of those choices.

There's no better policy in a society then pursuing a health and safety of its people.

I've always been a ... believer in good regulation.

I have had a long tug-of-war going on with the FDA, in particular, and with other regulatory agencies, and it has nothing to do with vaccines.

Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.

The choice made by families not to immunize their children is not supported by public policy or medical research nor should such action be supported by taxpayers in the form of child care payments.

Modern 'public health' initiatives have moved well beyond what could reasonably be classified as public goods. Today, government undertakes all sorts of policies in the name of public health that are aimed at regulating personal behavior.