Knowing what your parents have gives you hints of things, but your genome is a totally unique combination of and interchange of DNA from your parents. There is no one else like you genetically.
Craig VenterRead
A doctor can save maybe a few hundred lives in a lifetime. A researcher can save the whole world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The impact of researchers can transcend individual patient care, potentially benefiting humanity as a whole.
This quote emphasizes the significant difference in the scope of impact between a practicing doctor and a researcher. While doctors perform invaluable work by saving lives one patient at a time, researchers have the potential to develop solutions and advancements that can radically improve health and wellbeing on a global scale, thereby influencing countless lives simultaneously.
Themes
ResearchDoctorImpactMedicineLifeHumanity
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on the importance of research funding, this quote can be used to highlight how research affects global health.
More from Craig Venter
All quotes βWe're moving from reading the genetic code to writing it.
Craig VenterRead
The Anthropocentic Age - the first age in which humankind is the dominant species on the planet - cuts both ways: it is up to us to destroy or save the planet. We certainly have the ability.
Craig VenterRead
Genome design is going to be a key part of the future. That's why we need fast, cheap, accurate DNA synthesis, so you can make a lot of iterations of something and test them.
Craig VenterRead
Genomics are about individuals. It's about what's specific to you, not your siblings, not your parents - each of us is totally unique. We will only see that uniqueness by drilling down to the genetic code.
Craig VenterRead
Now that we can read and write the genetic code, put it in digital form and translate it back into synthesized life, it will be possible to speed up biological evolution to the pace of social evolution.
Craig VenterRead
Similar quotes
I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if weβd known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only laterβor not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence, warfare and male dominance, but rather around sexuality, empathy, caring and cooperation. What a different intellectual landscape we would occupy!
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A scientist who is also a human being cannot rest while knowledge which might be used to reduce suffering rests on the shelf.
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Scientists tend to build a reputation on refuting the theories of those who have gone before. Yet, whatever we hypothesize, observe, measure or record about the natural world, it leaves more unanswered questions.
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I would only once have the opportunity to let my scientific career encompass a path from the double helix to the three billion steps of the human genome.
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To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.
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Every living being is also a fossil. Within it, all the way down to the microscopic structure of its proteins, it bears the traces if not the stigmata of its ancestry.
Jacques MonodRead