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.

We may have charted all the continents on the planet, and we may have discovered all the mammals, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing left to explore on Earth.

The features of globalization have huge consequences on pandemics. It just connects us so much more closely... And as a consequence, every one of these viruses that passes from animals to humans has the capacity to infect all of us.

Swine flu is not an anomaly. We know that swine flu - like the vast majority of new outbreaks - comes from animals. We should be monitoring those animals and the humans that come into contact with them, so we can catch these viruses early, before they infect major cities and spread throughout the world.

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

That's the best part of being in private practice, by the way: being able to say whatever I want. In the government I couldn't talk to reporters and couldn't speak to the public, and now I just feel free. I have a First Amendment right again, and I exercise it daily.

When you receive a cancer diagnosis, you're more vulnerable than at any other time in your life. I've personally had the experience twice. My only hope for survival was alternatives. But that was my decision, what I thought was best for me.

We do some experiments in humans, some in mice, and there are some questions that can only be answered in nonhuman primates. It's true that you can't immediately say that those experiments will translate into human health, but nevertheless, it is obvious that having an understanding of human memory is going to be important for human health.