Vaccines and antibiotics have made many infectious diseases a thing of the past; we've come to expect that public health and modern science can conquer all microbes. But nature is a formidable adversary.

Over and over, nature shows that it's a really tough adversary. That's why it's important that we invest in laboratories, disease detectives, research, mosquito control, the public health system around the world to find, stop, track, prevent health threats.

The way we work in public health is, we make the best recommendations and decisions based on the best available data.

I loved clinical practice, but in public health, you can impact more than one person at a time. The whole society is your patient.

AIDS is a plague - numerically, statistically and by any definition known to modern public health - though no one in authority has the guts to call it one.

Public health and safety are my highest priorities.