Leroy Hood

“If a startup stays in Microsoft, it does not have a chance, because all it tries to do goes against what Microsoft is about.”

“Medicine will be personalized and preventive: Your genome might predict that you have an 80 percent chance of breast cancer by the time you are 50, but if you take a preventive drug starting when you are 40, the chance will drop to 2 percent.”

“Anybody that thought the genome was going to directly provide drugs was a fool. Biological networks are not simple, and making drugs to affect them won't be simple.”

“My own view about knowledge is we're always better to have knowledge.”

“If you know the mother's genome and the father's genome, and you see that the children have some genes that neither parent has, then you know that difference is either a mutation or a processing error.”

“Cloning interferon was not something I wanted to get into.”

“Genes are natural resources.”

“Many nonprofits rely on grants alone.”

“What is unique about humans is their individuality.”

“We don't argue if drug companies create drugs that can cure humans and charge lots of money for them, even though we all have these diseases. It will be pretty hard to make a different argument for genes.”

“The systems approach to biology will be the dominant theme in medicine.”

“If you look at healthcare today, it's all about disease. It's not about understanding wellness at all.”

“I think the real problem is it's easy to persuade young kids of particular kinds of ideas, because they are flexible.”

“My fundamental philosophy is that you owe it to society to transfer to them any knowledge you have that might be useful.”

“In the end, what counts is what you do.”

“Almost never does a single company have excellence in a multiplicity of disciplines.”

“Your genome sequence will become a vital part of your medical record, thereby providing critical information about how to optimize your wellness.”

“What you need to learn how to do is analyze situations and do differential diagnoses and understand the principle and the concepts rather than learn all the details, and medical school doesn't begin to do that.”

“I already get 10 job offers a year, which is more than I can handle anyway.”