Lewis Thomas Quotes

It was clear to me from the start that I would need to combine both a medical degree with a research qualification, to keep at the cutting edge of medical science and technology.

It worries me about our unwillingness to really address reforms and modernization in Medicare. This thing was designed 37 years ago. It has not evolved to keep pace with current medical technology.

There are things that you can do today that, years ago, there was nothing. The community today needs to know that with MRI and the current medications the view is good.

It is false to suggest that medical breakthroughs come only through government research.

The growth of medical expenditures in the U.S. is not caused by administrative costs but by increases in the technical intensity of care over time - a.k.a. medical progress.

The pursuit of curiosity about the basic facts of nature has proven, with few exceptions throughout the history of medical science, to be the route by which the successful drugs and devices of modern medicine were discovered.

I don't believe medical discoveries are doing much to advance human life. As fast as we create ways to extend it we are inventing ways to shorten it.

Modern medical advances have helped millions of people live longer, healthier lives. We owe these improvements to decades of investment in medical research.

The digital world has been in a separate orbit from our medical cocoon, and it's time the boundaries be taken down.

I do not believe that Congress or the Administration should prohibit the medical community from pursuing a promising avenue of research that may improve the lives of millions of Americans.

As medical research continues and technology enables new breakthroughs, there will be a day when malaria and most all major deadly diseases are eradicated on Earth.

Consumer technology and medical tools have been created to benefit our daily lives. Without self-regulation, though, the industry could be at risk of potentially halting years of innovation and stunting growth in this field.

Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness.

The best thing about modern living is anaesthesia.

The dilemma of modern medicine, and the underlying central flaw in medical education and, most of all, in the training of interns, is the irresistible drive to do something, anything. It is expected by patients and too often agreed to by their doctors, in the face of ignorance.

In the history of medicine, it is not always the great scientist or the learned doctor who goes forward to discover new fields, new avenues, new ideas.

Medical need is an infinitely expandable concept. There is always one more marginal procedure that can be done. There is no end to the medical and surgical treatments that a technologically sophisticated and advanced society can give to aging bodies.

St. Louis has always been a great center for medicine. It has been a leader in the nation since the early part of the 20th century. Along with that, we've been a leader in medical science and biomedical science and innovation in medicine.

There are a lot of engineering advances that lend themselves to being married with medical advances.

Twenty-first century medicine must not be confined to a twentieth-century bureaucracy.

When I was a medical student in the 1950s, we practically never spoke about Alzheimer's disease. And why is that so? And that is because people didn't live long enough to have Alzheimer's disease.

If I could time travel into the future, my first port of call would be the point where medical technology is at its best because, like most people on this planet, I have this aversion to dying.

We're living through a paradigm shift. People are going to look back at us and say, 'They used to cut people's legs off.' Then they'll just give an injection and the blood flow will be restored and the limb saved.

Huge sums are invested globally in medical research and development - and with good reason.

What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it - the process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialized language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism.