Political Quotes

“earlier this week we received tremendously exciting news in that we essentially had completion of the mapping of the human genome. It is tremendously exciting to me, both as a policymaker but also as a physician, as someone who has spent his life taking care of thousands of patients because it introduces a whole new way of thinking that in the history of mankind we just simply have not had. Now there will be whole new ways of thinking. I think we should salute both Craig Venter from Celera and Francis Collins for pioneering, for leading this great effort, which will totally change the way we do such things as engineer drugs, the so-called gene drugs. Now and into the future, we can begin to think how we use our own genes, our own proteins, our own metabolites in such a way that they become the pharmaceutical agent instead of a manufactured drug. It changes the way we will think about organ replacement. Before I came to the Senate, I would make an incision, remove a diseased heart, and have to put in a new heart. Hopefully, 10 years from now, or 15 years from now, when we transplant kidneys or a pancreas, or other organs, we will be able to engineer them based on what we have uncovered. A third area which this human genome project opens up, as we look to the future, is that of genetic testing.”