Laurie Garrett Quotes

… work on synthetic biology, or synbio, had become so cheap that its practitioners were no longer classically trained biologists. This meant that there were no shared assumptions regarding the new field’s ethics, professional standards, or safety.

Dual use research of concern (DURC) is research that, based on current understanding, can be reasonably anticipated to provide knowledge, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied by others to pose a threat to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, or materiel

As the scientific community has started debating “human-directed evolution” the biosecurity establishment remains behind the curve.

But I am just as appalled that my experience, knowledge, dedication and service relative to defending the United States against biological warfare has been turned against me in connection with the search for the anthrax killer.

The United States and WHO [World Health Organization] have no clear protocols for DURC, no standards for determining safety, and no plans for a coordinated global response.

Security is an attempt to try to make the universe static so that we feel safe.

When we faced a possibility here in New York of chemical and biological attack, three days after September 11, I called in all of the experts, academic experts, Nobel Prize laureates, and doctors who had dealt with anthrax, doctors who had dealt with various forms of chemical and biological attack.

Now we must worry as much about hard-to-detect small-scale biological weapons producers as we do about the large-scale nuclear weapons programs

Our security strategies have not yet caught up with the risks we are facing. The globalization that has swept away the barriers to the movement of goods, ideas and people has also swept with it barriers that confined and localized security threats.

The scientist is speaking in a forum to which opposing scientific views are not more or less automatically accorded equal access. The politician is free to select his own experts to develop an issue in the way that has maximum political utility to him. Truth may be only incidental. the scientist is speaking in a forum to which opposing scientific views are not more or less automatically accorded equal access. The politician is free to select his own experts to develop an issue in the way that has maximum political utility to him. Truth may be only incidental.

Biological science is a tool, and like all tools, it can be used for good or bad. It’s like a knife blade with three edges: The edge that cuts, the dull edge that does not cut well and the edge that cuts what you do not want it to.

The rejection of the scientific consensus on climate change is one of the many examples of populist revolt against expert consensus in the United States today.

There was nothing I knew that would indicate that if we could do it [create an atomic bomb], they [the Germans] couldn’t do it. Therefore I thought it was very important to try and cooperate. I felt I should do it in order to protect civilization. …

If it were up to me, I wouldn't have security. But Hef thinks I'm naive. He feels I'm vulnerable to kidnapping.

Science is really about individual experts reaching a consensus.

Out of this nettle - danger - we pluck this flower - safety.

Nuclear weapons need large facilities, but genetic engineering can be done in a small lab. You can't regulate every lab in the world. The danger is that either by accident or design, we create a virus that destroys us.

Aw, no one's gonna shoot at me.

We live in a world with so many dangers that we have to be careful whom we trust.

Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

I touched the combination lock. I concentrated so hard I felt like I was dead-lifting five hundred pounds. My pulse quickening. A line of sweat trickled down my nose. Finally I felt gears turning. Metal groaned, tumblers clicked, and the bolts popped back. Carefully avoiding the handle, I pried open the door with my fingertips and extracted an unbroken vial of green liquid. Hal exhaled. Thalia kissed me on the cheek, which she probably shouldn't haven't done while I was holding a tube of deadly poison. "You are so good," she said. Did that make the risk worth? Yeah, pretty much.

Security isn't what the wise person looks for; it's opportunity. And once we begin looking for that, we find it on every side. You can measure opportunity with the same yardstick that measures the risk involved. They go together.

A study of Disease-of Pestilences methodically prepared and deliberately launched upon man and beast-is certainly being pursue in the laboratories of more than one great country. Blight to destroy crops, Anthrax to slay horses and cattle, Plague to poison not armies but whole districts - such are the lines along which military science is remorselessly advancing.

By preventing new conflicts, we avert the causes of radicalization and the risk of terrorist attacks in Europe, including in Germany.