Infectious Diseases Quotes

• At times in my life, I have been utterly lonely. At other times, I've had disgusting infectious diseases. Try admitting these things in our culture.

  Martha Beck

  Lonely, Trying, Admitting

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• Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles, spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves, and killed an estimated 95% of the New World's Indian population.

  Jared Diamond

  Literature, World, Disease

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• The tourist transports his own values and demands to his destinations and implants them like an infectious disease, decimating whatever values existed before.

  Arthur Erickson

  Tourism, Tourists, Demand

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• I have seen this happen in recent years with regard to pharmaceuticals and vaccines, where, working together, we are improving access to medicines and vaccines for infectious diseases in the poorest countries.

  Gro Harlem Brundtland

  Country, Years, Vaccines

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• Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Long, Childhood

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.265, Macmillan

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• In today's world, it is shortsighted to think that infectious diseases cannot cross borders. By allowing developing countries access to generic drugs, we not only help improve health in those nations, we also help ourselves control these debilitating and often deadly diseases.

  Ron Wyden

  Country, Thinking, Drug

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• Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world. The dragons are all dead and the lance grows rusty in the chimney corner. ... About the only sporting proposition that remains unimpaired by the relentless domestication of a once free-living human species is the war against those ferocious little fellow creatures, which lurk in dark corners and stalk us in the bodies of rats, mice and all kinds of domestic animals; which fly and crawl with the insects, and waylay us in our food and drink and even in our love

  Hans Zinsser

  War, Adventure, Science

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• Infectious Disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world.

  Hans Zinsser

  Adventure, World, Disease

  Hans Zinsser (2011). “Rats, Lice and History”, p.13, Transaction Publishers

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• It’s time to close the books on infectious diseases, declare the war against pestilence won, and shift national resources to such chronic problems as cancer and heart disease.

  William H. Stewart

  War, Cancer, Book

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• The pure culture is the foundation for all research on infectious disease.

  Robert Koch

  Science, Foundation, Culture

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• We have chosen to write the biography of our disease because we love it platonically - as Amy Lowell loved Keats - and have sought its acquaintance wherever we could find it. And in this growing intimacy we have become increasingly impressed with the influence that this and other infectious diseases, which span - in their protoplasmic continuities - the entire history of mankind, have had upon the fates of men.

  Hans Zinsser

  Writing, Fate, Men

  Hans Zinsser (2011). “Rats, Lice and History”, p.6, Transaction Publishers

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• My crystal ball or intuition tells me that in the '80s the impact of RIA [radioimmunoassay] on the study of infectious diseases may prove as revolutionary as its impact on endocrinology in the 60s.

  Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

  Impact, Intuition, Balls

  "A Probe For Fine Structure Of Biologic Systems". Rosalyn Sussman Yalow's Nobel Lecture in Stockholm, Sweden, December 8, 1977.

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• We have grown accustomed to the wonders of clean water, indoor plumbing, laser surgery, genetic engineering, artificial joints, replacement body parts, and the much longer lives that accompany them. Yet we should remember that the vast majority of humans ever born died before the age of 10 from an infectious disease.

  S. Jay Olshansky

  Engineering, Water, Age

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• We shall not defeat any of the infectious diseases that plague the developing world until we have also won the battle for safe drinking water, sanitation, and basic health care.

  Kofi Annan

  Drinking, Water, Battle

  FaceBook post by Kofi Annan from Apr 07, 2017

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• A health system that lacks commodities for managing high-mortality infectious diseases and the main killers of mothers and young children will not have an adequate impact. By the same token, even the best-stocked delivery system will have an inadequate impact if it fails to reach the poor.

  Margaret Chan

  Mother, Children, Impact

  "WHO director general Margaret Chan says fight for global health on all fronts" by Sarah Boseley, www.theguardian.com. May 9, 2011.

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• As anyone who's ever contracted it knows, lies are an infectious disease. They slip under the almond slivers of your fingernails and into your bloodstream.

  Jodi Picoult

  Lying, Almonds, Disease

  Jodi Picoult (2003). “Second Glance: A Novel”, p.191, Simon and Schuster

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• The ideal way to get rid of any infectious disease would be to shoot instantly every person who comes down with it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Would Be, Disease, Way

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• If you love something set it free, but don't be surprised if it comes back with herpes.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Love, Funny, Broken Heart

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• In low-income countries, the main problems you have is infectious diseases.

  Bill Gates

  Country, Income, Disease

  "Bill Gates: ‘Death is something we really understand extremely well’". Interview with Ezra Klein, www.washingtonpost.com. May 17, 2013.

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• In all, 86 per cent of the increased life expectancy was due to decreases in infectious diseases. And the bulk of the decline in infectious disease deaths occurred prior to the age of antibiotics. Less than 4 per cent of the total improvement in life expectancy since 1700s can be credited to twentieth-century advances in medical care.

  Laurie Garrett

  Age, Care, Disease

  Laurie Garrett (2003). “Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health”, p.9

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• For all these infectious diseases, the goal is to eventually get rid of them. And to do that we need to invent new tools, but nobody was doing that because there was no money to buy on behalf of the poorest, even the existing tools.

  Bill Gates

  Goal, Needs, Tools

  Source: www.ctvnews.ca

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• Why are infectious disease doctors the best ones to date? They are the most cultured and sensitive.

  Peter Rogers MD

  Doctors, Disease, Sensitive

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• Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over.

  Arthur Koestler

  War, Men, Epidemics

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• Germ theory, which secularized infectious disease, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.

  Jill Lepore

  Epidemiology, Disease, Sides

  "It's Spreading" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. June 1, 2009.

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• That's the world out there, little green apples and infectious disease.

  Don DeLillo

  Apples, World, Disease

  Don DeLillo (2011). “The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories”, p.73, Simon and Schuster

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