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Johnnetta Cole
Past President of Spelman College
A woman comes up to me (I'm in the Atlanta Airport) and she says, "I saw you yesterday, how are you?" And I said, "Well, it's nice to see you, but I don't think we met yesterday." "Oh, yes, we did," said she. "You were at the Cherokee Country Club." I said, "Oh, I can assure you, I wasn't at the Cherokee Country Club." She said, "Now come on, I saw you yesterday." At which point I said, "You know, I have a very dear friend -- a Spelman graduate -- whose name is Veronica Biggins. Each of us is tall, each of has a sort of long face, graying hair. You probably saw Veronica Biggins. In fact, I think she may belong to that club." "Oh no," said the person. "I saw you. You were the woman who waited on our table." Now, what do you do with that? You could scream at her, you can get your adrenaline all up, or you can really say, "How sad, that your only image of an African-American woman is someone who waits on you." Rather than spending my energy that way, I'd rather spend my energy helping young folk -- look like me, usually thinner, no gray hair -- helping those young women to go on, to prepare themselves, not to wait tables, but to figure out ultimately the real cure for AIDS. Or to find, perhaps equally significant, why it is that this disease called racism persists.
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Francis Collins
Presidential Medal of Freedom
One morning I walked in to see a young farmer who we had treated the day before for tuberculosis, and he looked at me and he said, "You know, I get the feeling that you're wondering why you're here." He said, "You came here for one reason. You came here for me, and that ought to be enough." And that sticks in my mind -- more than any moment I think I have experienced in my life -- as truth. We should have our grand dreams, we should pursue them, that's what being human is all about, that's part of the nobility of our enterprise. But we should never forget that what really matters is what you do one-on-one with a single human being. Where you reach out and you try to help them make their life a little better.
And if that's all you do, your whole life is to do that occasionally, then you have succeeded.
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Francis Collins
Presidential Medal of Freedom
I think another obligation I have is not to imagine that my opinion on those matters is particularly weighty. I can weigh in when it comes to the scientific facts. When it comes to the uses to which genetics should be put, I don't think scientists like myself have any unique abilities to decide what's moral and ethical. We need everybody's input on that. And in that regard, I think I have to be careful not to use my own circumstance as the scientific leader of this project to imagine that I'm also in some special ethical position where my opinion must be the right one. That I think is something to constantly keep in front of me.
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Denton Cooley
Pioneer of Heart Transplants
I have visited many operating rooms around the country, and seen many really celebrated surgeons in the operating room. The ones that I admire the most are those who maintain a sort of even pattern of behavior, who treat their assistants and nurses well, and don't have flights of temperament or anger, and that sort of thing. To me, it just reflects their insecurity. I just don't believe that that's the way -- the pattern -- that I want to follow. I have five junior surgeons who are my associates, and none of them are temperamental. I selected them all because I liked their behavior in the operating room. In another institution, right here in our medical center, the surgeons are highly temperamental, and there are all sorts of histrionics going on in the operating room. You don't see that at the Texas Heart Institute.
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Denton Cooley
Pioneer of Heart Transplants
I don't lead by force, I lead by example. And if I can, set a good example. If I can set an example to my staff and my group, by being punctual, I come to work every morning, walk onto the hospital floor within two or three minutes of the same time every day, and they can depend upon it. I deplore these doctors who would show up, you know, an hour, a half hour late, because they were doing something else, or so on. If I say I'm going to be there, I am there every morning. And I am going to be there until I get my work done at night.
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