Frank Macfarlane Burnet Quotes

• I can see no practical application of molecular biology to human affairs... DNA is a tangled mass of linear molecules in which the informational content is quite inaccessible.

  Frank Macfarlane Burnet

  Dna, Tangled, Molecules

  "Immunological Surveillance". Book by Burnet, F.M., Pergamon Press, pp. 240-241, 1970.

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• The idea of man as the dominant mammal of the earth whose whole behaviour tends to be dominated by his own desire for dominance gripped me. It seemed to explain almost everything, and I applied it to everything.

  Frank Macfarlane Burnet

  Motivation, Men, Ideas

  Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet (1972). “Dominant Mammal: The Biology of Human Destiny”

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• I can see no hope at present of such a vaccine being produced... I have adopted a frankly defeatist attitude towards the problem of poliomyelitis and I hope that future developments will prove me wrong... No means of controlling poliomyelitis is at present visible.

  Frank Macfarlane Burnet

  Attitude, Mean, Vaccines

  "Proceedings of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians", vol. 4-6, "Some aspects of the epidemiology of poliomyelitis", 1949.

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• I like to think that when Medawar and his colleagues showed that immunological tolerance could be produced experimentally the new immunology was born. This is a science which to me has far greater potentialities both for practical use in medicine and for the better understanding of living process than the classical immunochemistry which it is incorporating and superseding.

  Frank Macfarlane Burnet

  Thinking, Medicine, Understanding

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