“There may be a little bit of finger-pointing - there always is in a si...” — Richard Preston Quote

“There may be a little bit of finger-pointing - there always is in a situation like this - but I think of Ebola as an act of nature. It's the biological equivalent of a tsunami, and yes, we are having trouble handling it.”

“If a healthy person were placed on the other side of a room from a person who was sick with AIDS, the AIDS virus would not be able to drift across the room through the air and infect the healthy person.”

“If you want to survive Ebola, you need to be young. If you're in your late 30s, the death rate is about 80 percent, and if you're over 45, then the death rate goes up to about 90 percent.”

“Biological diversity is messy. It walks, it crawls, it swims, it swoops, it buzzes. But extinction is silent, and it has no voice other than our own.”

“For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.”

“In my own career, I have always tried to treat my colleagues with respect and kindness, whoever they are, and am proud to have developed and mentored the careers of many excellent young scientists who will be tackling tomorrow's biological problems long after I have left the scene.”