I believe I have a personal responsibility to make a positive impact on society.
Anthony Fauci
Bioethics is a very, very important field. As we get more and more in the arena of understanding science and getting better opportunities, the fact that you can do things with biological sciences that have an impact on a human being means you must have ethical standards.
You can't rush the science, but when the science points you in the right direction, then you can start rushing.
Science is telling us that we can do phenomenal things if we put our minds and our resources to it.
The world is a place that is so interconnected that what happens in another part of the world will impact us.
The discovery of HIV in 1983 and the proof that it was the cause of AIDS in 1984 were the first major scientific breakthroughs that provided a specific target for blood-screening tests and opened the doorway to the development of antiretroviral medications.
The most pressing ethical question is to make sure that everything you do from a scientific standpoint is done for the ultimate good and positive issue for the people that you're caring about.
An AIDS-free generation would mean that virtually no child is born with HIV; that, as those children grow up, their risk of becoming infected is far lower than it is today; and that those who become infected can access treatment to help prevent them from developing AIDS and from passing the virus on to others.
There's more than one way to get to the goal that you want to get to, but once you compromise your own principles, then you're lost. You're really lost.
Some people feel, you make your case, if they listen to you, fine, if they don't, that's it. That's not what leadership is. Leadership is trying to continue to make a case.
There cannot be any impediment to science that will ultimately be good to the general public.
Antibiotics are a very serious public health problem for us, and it's getting worse. Resistant microbes outstrip new antibiotics. It's an ongoing problem. It's not like we can fix it, and it's over. We have to fight continued resistance with a continual pipeline of new antibiotics and continue with the perpetual challenge.
Even the pandemic flu of 1918 only killed one to two percent of the people who were infected.
When I was a child, there were not that many vaccines. I was vaccinated for polio. I actually got measles as a child. I got pertussis, whooping cough. I remember that very well.
A pandemic influenza would mean widespread infection essentially throughout every region of the world.
You can have an epidemic in a state. You can have it in a region. You can have it in a country where the critical level of disease passes a certain threshold, and we call that an 'epidemic threshold.'
I'm a born, cautious optimist.
I consider myself a perpetual student. You seek and learn every day: from an experiment in the lab, from reading a scientific journal, from taking care of a patient. Because of this, I rarely get bored.
Activism has been very productive in our society.
The worst potential bio-terrorist is nature itself.
The immune system's goal is to protect the body against invaders either from without, such as microbes, or from within, such as cancers and different types of neoplastic transformation.
It's extremely likely that the people who have never been exposed to a human who has leprosy, it's very likely they got leprosy from exposure to an armadillo.
I grew up in an inner city neighborhood called the Benson Hurst section of Brooklyn, which was a very embracing, warm, family-type neighborhood.
Well I think the media has a very powerful influence on almost anything and everything we do because the general public gets their perception of what is going on in things they don't have immediate access to from what they get through the media.
Human nature is weak.
When we can get the incidence of HIV down enough to turn the trajectory of the pandemic, it will assume a momentum of its own in diminishing HIV.
The launch of phase 1 Ebola vaccine studies is a first step in developing a vaccine that could be licensed and used in the field to protect not only the front line health care workers but also those living in areas where Ebola virus exists.
Whooping cough is not a mild disease. Whooping cough, before the vaccination, could make you very, very sick. First of all, there was a chance you could die from it - small chance, not a big chance. You would be coughing and coughing. It wouldn't last for a few days, like a cold.
I think, collectively, we should be paying more attention to what is going on around us in the world among people who don't have the advantages that we have.
When a company is fairly certain of a profit margin that is substantial, it can assume responsibility for the clinical trials to develop a blockbuster drug.
I think it would be over-exaggeration to think that there are millions of viruses ready to jump on us and bring us back to the 14th century. That would be looking over a ledge that isn't there.
You might be asking too much if you're looking for one vaccine for every conceivable influenza. If you have one or two that cover the vast majority of isolates, I wouldn't be ashamed to call that a 'universal vaccine.'
The most confounding thing of all is that we still haven't identified the cause of 20% to 30% of adult common colds.
When you're dealing with a very sick person and you're doing something to them, an intervention, be it a procedure or a medication, safety is critical.
The Europeans have lots of data on the use of adjuvanted flu vaccine in the elderly, but I don't think anybody has really good data on adjuvants in children.
I enjoy very much communication. I think that scientists need to communicate.
It's very, very difficult when you have to prepare for something that might not ever happen.
Today we know the best way to prevent the spread of Ebola infection is through public health measures.
Is it or is it not ethical to create an embryo, and to create a person for the purpose of getting an organ to give to someone else? Your knee-jerk reaction is 'absolutely not;' but you need the ethical analysis of that to show why and how that is something that you need to stay away from.
We need to know more about how group A strep interact with humans to cause so many different illnesses.
Disagreements are one of the fundamental positive aspects of science.
I run a modest-sized laboratory that's looking specifically at what we call 'the pathogenic mechanisms of HIV disease, or AIDS.'
Better ways to diagnose, treat and prevent E. coli 0157:H7 infections are badly needed.
There has been treatment for hepatitis C, but the treatment has not been overwhelmingly effective, number 1. And number 2, it has had considerable toxicity.
You don't have to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the country if you have a couple of cases of smallpox cropping up.
Investigating rare diseases gives researchers more clues about how the healthy immune system functions.
I'm generally considered a conservative in my predictions for disease.
For the first time, we have the genetic sequences of all three of the players in the global malaria debacle: the parasite, the anopheles mosquito and the human. It's a very important milestone.
There's always going to be the need for new medications, better medications.
Pneumococcal disease is a real threat. Pneumococcal disease is a bacterial infection that causes anything from middle ear infection to pneumonia to meningitis. Children are particularly vulnerable to it, but adults can get pneumococcal disease themselves.