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Francis Collins
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Francis Collins: I grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, on a small farm with no plumbing. It was a fairly arduous existence during the winter, because we had stock that had to be taken care of. It all sounds very pastoral. It was hard work, but it was also educationally challenging in a good way, because my father was a Ph.D. in English, and my mother a very talented playwright. My mother decided that the county schools were not a place where a young person would learn to love learning. And so she kept my brother and me at home and taught us there until the sixth grade. And that was I think probably a very important part of my life's experience, because I really did learn how to love acquiring new information.
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Francis Collins
Presidential Medal of Freedom
I now think I'm the luckiest guy in science. I have a chance to stand at the helm of a project that I honestly believe is the most significant undertaking that we have mounted so far in an organized way in all of science. I believe that reading our blueprints, cataloguing our own instruction book, will be judged by history as more significant than even splitting the atom or going to the moon. This is an adventure into ourselves. To figure out, what are the instructions that allow us as human beings to carry out all of our biological attributes? I think all of history, and the history of biology and medicine, will be divided by this stunning achievement. Of what we knew before we knew the human genome sequence, and what we were able to do after that. And for me, this kid from the small farm in Virginia, to have a chance to oversee that is just an astounding thing.
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Denton Cooley
Pioneer of Heart Transplants
Denton Cooley: I, like so many people, believe that the cost of medicine is going up at too rapid a rate. And I feel that if we are going to provide health care to society, that we have to keep the cost within certain bounds. I think that some surgeons and hospitals may abuse that sort of ability -- or that opportunity -- that they have to escalate the cost of everything, and be completely unconcerned about what things cost. I guess it's because I was raised during the Great Depression that I have always been concerned about the cost of things. I don't want to compromise a patient's care because of the cost, but at the same time, I don't want to abuse our privilege of providing excellent health care. Some people say the cost is of no concern, this is a human life, and you have to do everything possible. But I think there is a limit to that. And since we do have a high-volume practice, I want to turn some of that back to the individual, so that they can have a reasonable cost of their health care.
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Francis Ford Coppola
Filmmaker, Producer and Screenwriter
Most Italians who came to this country are, you know, very patriotic. And what that meant was just that there was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, that you could become successful, and wouldn't be held down, due to who your family was and what have you. And certainly, in my case, I found that to be true. I became quite successful very young, and it was mainly because I was -- I would have to say -- because I was so enthusiastic and I just worked so hard at it.
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