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James Watson
Discoverer of the DNA Molecule
One should see life as consisting of a script, which is DNA, and the actors, which are largely proteins, which are described in the text to great detail. And so you've got a system of a play where you've got a script and you've got the actors, and you could say, "Well, who is more important? Shakespeare or Gielgud? Whose playing now?" And everyone'll go back and say, "The actors are very important but scripts are more important." So we're getting the script for life and, you know, every species has its own script. And initially people said there's just too many letters and it costs too much money. And so starting about 15 years ago we got together and said, "It won't cost that much. We could do it for $3 billion but it would take us 15 years," and you know, back of the envelope calculations was pretty good! It took a little less and its cost was about what we said it would be.
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James Watson
Discoverer of the DNA Molecule
When you go out, people say, "What about super babies?" I said, "None of us know how to produce a super baby, but what would be wrong with a super baby?" And if you could have kids brighter than yourself, you always want to have your kids have opportunities you didn't, and this sort of saying, "Oh, we can't! We shouldn't try and enhance life because we'll make the spread between those who are lucky and those unlucky even greater." That's a very, rather nasty view of human nature. I think we would actually try and help the people at the bottom. And it's always, you know, "The rich are going to get richer,' and, you know, our current tax bill is pretty upsetting because you're thinking the rich get richer, and so I don't like that. But I think, you know, those people really don't want homeless people on the streets because they're schizophrenic. That's not very nice to live with. I mean, those people--it's not nice. So we're trying to help those people. I think you've got to sort of assume we've succeeded as a social species because we really do like each other. We're not fundamentally nasty. The nasty people are the exception. Of course, you know, in individual lives we have our good moments and we have some bad moments, but I think one should see genetics in an optimistic way, not a pessimistic way where you've got to stop everything.
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Andrew Weil
Integrative Medicine
If you have a patient with a bacterial pneumonia who's acutely ill and you put them in the hospital and give them intravenous antibiotics and 48 hours later they're out of danger, I think most people would interpret that as being that the antibiotic caused the cure. And what I'm asking people to do is to look at it a little differently. What the antibiotic does in that circumstance is to knock populations of germs down to a level where the immune system can take over and finish a job that it couldn't do because it was overwhelmed. And to me, that's a model for how our treatments work at their best. It's not that they work directly to produce a cure, they work indirectly by impinging on innate mechanisms of healing.
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Andrew Weil
Integrative Medicine
It is very clear now I think, including to deans of medical schools, that medical schools are no longer graduating physicians who are satisfying the needs of patients. Now what I would say patients want, based on my talking to lots and lots of patients, are that they want physicians who have the time and can take the time to sit down them, listen to them, explain in a language that they can understand the nature of their problems. And go over with them their options for treatment, who won't just push drugs and surgery as the only way of doing it. Who are at least conversant with nutritional influences on health. Who can answer intelligently questions about use of dietary supplements. Who are sensitive to mind/body interactions. Who will not laugh in your face when you bring up topics like Chinese medicine. Who will look at you as not just a physical body.
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Sanford Weill
Financier and Philanthropist
Ownership gets people to think like owners, to think that the company is really theirs. Really good ideas and innovative ideas come from the bottoms of organizations -- not really the tops of organizations -- where people are dealing directly with the customers and really understand what the market wants, rather than dictating what the market wants, where people can see the silly things that the chairman may be doing, or whatever, that's wasting a lot of money and there might be a better way to do it.
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