David Baltimore Quotations

I think we can allow the therapeutic uses of nuclear transplant technology, which we call cloning, without running the danger of actually having live human beings born.

I think they are looking for publicity and they are looking for a name for themselves.

When are we going to say cancer is cured? I'm not sure when that will happen, if that will happen because cancer is a very slippery disease and it involves a vast number of cells in the body and those cells are continually mutating.

There is actually a fair amount of money being put behind science today.

What does gene A do? What does gene B do? What does it do in different contexts? What's its importance? We know the answer to that for a very small number of genes, the ones that made themselves evident many years ago.

When we talk about stem cells, we are actually talking about a complicated series of things, including adult stem cells which are largely cells devoted to replacing individual tissues like blood elements or liver or even the brain.

There are lots of other issues in policy including the stem cell issue.

The argument has been made in Congress that it is slippery slope if you allow therapeutic, what people people are calling therapeutic cloning, then you will get reproductive cloning.

So I don't know where he cut corners and where he didn't.

I don't think people took it seriously because it was such an obviously unattainable goal. I was surprised, and I know lots of other people were surprised, that he chose a time so near, when we see it as a very difficult problem.

He was a very personally attractive, excited, and thoughtful guy who cared about a wide range of science. When I first heard there was a question about his work, it came as a very great surprise to me.

There is an increasing belief that we need to understand the structure better,

Were we to go with 60 percent at NIH reviews, many of us scientists would be very uncomfortable with the quality.

you do have a certain responsibility to be a spokesman for the scientific community and to represent people.

The American Cancer Society has done the American public a really great disservice.

AIDS is the most potent and destructive scourge right now in terms of diseases,

This is not a decision that I have made easily, but I am convinced that the interests of the Institute will be best served by a presidential transition at this particular time in its history,

In the last few years these efforts have been remarkably successful. It has been possible to identify both genes and the proteins involved in cancer induction.