Michael Specter Quotes - 9quotes.com

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Although it may seem callous to say so, millions of Americans are lucky that Magic Johnson was infected with H.I.V. There is no way of calculating how many lives he has saved. No advertising agency could have invented a better, or more effective, role model.
Written by Michael Specter
One morning every spring, for exactly two minutes, Israel comes to a stop. Pedestrians stand in place, drivers pull over to the side of the road, and nobody speaks, sings, eats, or drinks as the nation pays respect to the victims of the Nazi genocide. From the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, the only sounds one hears are sirens.
Written by Michael Specter
Until the Nineteen-Eighties, when Deng Xiaoping designated the area as China's first special economic zone, Shenzhen had been a tiny fishing village. Suddenly, eleven million people appeared, seemingly out of nowhere; factories sprang up, often housed in hastily constructed tower blocks.
Written by Michael Specter
Now, as the world's scientists focus with increasing intensity on transforming the genetic codes of every living creature into information that can be used to treat and ultimately prevent disease, Shenzhen is home to a different kind of factory: B.G.I., formerly called Beijing Genomics Institute, the world's largest genetic-research center.
Written by Michael Specter
With a hundred and seventy-eight machines to sequence the precise order of the billions of chemicals within a molecule of DNA, B.G.I. produces at least a quarter of the world's genomic data - more than Harvard University, the National Institutes of Health, or any other scientific institution.
Written by Michael Specter
Much of modern molecular biology and microbiology has been based on the effort to decipher the basic code of life, which is made up of four nucleotides: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine.
Written by Michael Specter
I have covered wars, before the epidemic began and since. They are all ugly and painful and unjust, but for me, nothing has matched the dread I felt while walking through the Castro, the Village, or Dupont Circle at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
Written by Michael Specter
Why do people refuse to vaccinate their children against measles or whooping cough? In many cases, because they have never seen measles and have no idea what it might do.
Written by Michael Specter
It is not possible to assert publicly that Monsanto is anything other than venal without being accused of being a sellout, a fraud, or worse.
Written by Michael Specter
By themselves, genetically engineered crops will not end hunger or improve health or bolster the economies of struggling countries. They won't save the sight of millions or fortify their bones. But they will certainly help.
Written by Michael Specter
If caught early, Lyme is easily treated with antibiotics. But activists, and many researchers, have long contended that tens of thousands of people remain unaware that they have been infected - sometimes for years, during which the bacterium can spread to the heart, nervous system, and brain.
Written by Michael Specter
The numbers matter: underreporting of Lyme disease obscures the true burden of the illnesses, on individuals as well as on health-care systems. It also makes it harder to convince Congress to fund research.
Written by Michael Specter
For decades, Barbara Walters has been described as a broadcast pioneer - and with good reason. In 1974, Walters became the first female host of the 'Today' show. In 1976, she became the first woman to serve as a network-news anchor. In 1984, she moderated the first presidential debate between Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan.
Written by Michael Specter
There has never been a verified scientific report that chelation therapy, a gluten-free diet, or anything else can cure autism.
Written by Michael Specter
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has established highly specific criteria for the diagnosis of Lyme disease: an acknowledged tick bite, the appearance of a bull's-eye rash, and, for those who don't live in a region where Lyme is common, laboratory evidence of infection.
Written by Michael Specter
Lyme disease is the most commonly reported tick-borne illness in the United States, and the incidence is growing rapidly. In 2009, the C.D.C. reported thirty-eight thousand cases, three times more than in 1991. Most researchers agree that the true number of infections is five to ten times higher.
Written by Michael Specter
Consumers deserve the right to know what's in their food - and obviously, most people want that choice. It's hard to see how more knowledge about the products we eat every day can hurt us.
Written by Michael Specter
The history of agriculture is the history of humans breeding seeds and animals to produce traits we want in our crops and livestock.
Written by Michael Specter
All the food we eat, whether Brussels sprouts or pork bellies, has been modified by mankind. Genetic engineering is only one particularly powerful way to do what we have been doing for eleven thousand years.
Written by Michael Specter
Industrial agriculture freed many people to pursue lives their parents and grandparents could never have. It made America modern.
Written by Michael Specter
Some people will deny anything that displeases or scares them: unusual pain in their chests, unwanted lumps beneath their skin, or the fact that humans share ancestry with apes are a few examples. Another is climate change.
Written by Michael Specter
There are people who could watch a hurricane like Sandy blow out of the Atlantic every other day and blame it on anything but human activity. They are like those who, having been diagnosed with diabetes, eat donuts for breakfast. There's not much to do about them.
Written by Michael Specter
The best way to deal with climate change has been obvious for years: cut greenhouse-gas emissions severely. We haven't done that. In 2010, for example, carbon emissions rose by six per cent - the largest such increase on record.
Written by Michael Specter
There are many theories about the best way to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere - some are ludicrous, others are at least worth study. The most commonly discussed plan is to lace the sky with reflective chemicals.
Written by Michael Specter
Most reputable scientists agree that climate change is real and that the effects are likely to be bad. But nobody can say for sure exactly what 'bad' means. The safest and most equitable way out of this horrific mess is simple: cut fossil-fuel emissions.
Written by Michael Specter
We inherit every one of our genes, but we leave the womb without a single microbe. As we pass through our mother's birth canal, we begin to attract entire colonies of bacteria. By the time a child can crawl, he has been blanketed by an enormous, unseen cloud of microorganisms - a hundred trillion or more.
Written by Michael Specter
We are inhabited by as many as ten thousand bacterial species; these cells outnumber those which we consider our own by ten to one, and weigh, all told, about three pounds - the same as our brain.
Written by Michael Specter
The passengers in our microbiome contain at least four million genes, and they work constantly on our behalf: they manufacture vitamins and patrol our guts to prevent infections; they help to form and bolster our immune systems, and digest food.
Written by Michael Specter
If left untreated, Lyme disease can be crippling, yet it is a difficult illness to contract: a tick needs to attach itself to your body for at least twenty-four hours. Even then, two weeks worth of commonly prescribed antibiotics will kill the bacterium.
Written by Michael Specter
I moved from Moscow to Rome with my family and two bicycles in 1998, and spent a lot of that year- and the next - obsessed, I am sorry to admit, with the bicycles. Italy, after all, was a place where thousands of middle-aged men felt perfectly comfortable spending many hours a week in brightly colored spandex.
Written by Michael Specter

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