Smallpox was the worst disease in history. It killed more people than all the wars in history.
We used to have to arrange things around the dialysis. I would have to plan where to play so I could be back in time, and couldn't go too far.
The life of any chronically ill person becomes extremely isolating.
Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.
You'd see little shallow graves, lined up, one after the other - babies. That's what happens when measles goes through a nutritionally deficient community. It's a horrible disease, and it spreads incredibly efficiently.
In an ideal world, the amount of money we spend on medical research to prevent or cure a disease would be proportional to its seriousness and the number of people who suffer from it.
AIDS is a very, very, very vicious disease, particularly in the black community.
When the AIDS epidemic first started there were people who said, "Well, if there weren't gays, then we wouldn't have this problem. It's got to be because of them - let it be them instead of us." But when you educate yourself about it, you can't help but realize that we're all affected by it. I think that things like that just become too daunting for people.
There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.
I think everyone's experience with a terminal disease is so deeply personal and unique to the person, the context in which they're living and the relationships that they have.
Life for me has always been about timing, and it was bad timing for that disease to hit me; it was time to exit stage.
Concerns about the possible side-effects of connected care are swept aside by the expectations of the benefits when people are confronted with a chronic disease themselves. Resistance that could be privacy-related completely disappears.
I always liked to chase the girls. Parkinson's stops all that. Now I might have a chance to go to heaven.
They were very short, the golden years. The golden years are when you can sit back, hopefully, and exchange memories. And that's the worst part about this disease. There's nobody to exchange memories with.
Like Joe Biden and so many other Americans, I've lost people I love deeply to cancer. I've heard often from those whose loved ones are suffering from Alzheimer's, addiction, and other debilitating diseases. Their heartbreak is real, and so we have a responsibility to respond with real solutions.
I share Alfred Nobel's conviction that war is the greatest of all human disasters. Infectious disease runs a good second.
HIV/AIDS has become much more than a health issue. HIV/AIDS is a development issue, it's a security issue.
While the Pilgrims landed on 'Plymouth Rock' in 1620, the Spanish had already settled in to the Southwest beginning in the late 1500s, and with the coming of Europeans, some tribes suffered massive declines in populations due to disease and violence. Some Tribes were wiped out by 90 percent, while others were completely decimated.
Comforts and syphilis are the greatest enemies of mankind.
Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.
There's nothing sexy about cancer.
For humble individuals like myself, there is one poor comfort, which is this, viz. that gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich men than poor, more wise men than simple.
When you get chickenpox as an adult, it's not a laughing matter.
I have three living children for whom this is a father who I want them to love and on whom they're going to have to rely if my disease takes a bad turn.
It's very hard when I've seen a couple of people very beloved in my life with terrible degenerative diseases.
