“We need to look outside the clinic to understand the ecosystem in which people live to create a transformational solution for making health better.”                             

Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg, Ph.D. – Executive Director of the Value Institute for Health and Care at the Dell School of Medicine in Austin, Texas in a keynote before the American Telemedicine Association on how change needs to come to healthcare that goes beyond telemedicine.

“Every generation faces fresh challenges and opportunities. As we look for new answers in the modern age, I for one prefer the tried and tested recipes, like speaking well of each other and respecting different points of view; coming together to seek out the common ground; and never losing sight of the bigger picture,” she said to the crowd. “To me, these approaches are timeless, and I commend them to everyone.”

Queen Elizabeth II, in comments before the Sandringham Women’s Institute in Norfolk including a rare focus on the political dimensions of life in governments around the world.

“The ethical questions are enormous. Gene editing is generating a ton of optimism for treating and curing diseases, including some that our foundation works on (though we fund work on altering crops and insects, not humans). But the technology could make inequity worse, especially if it is available only for wealthy people. I am surprised that these issues haven’t generated more attention from the general public. Today, artificial intelligence is the subject of vigorous debate. Gene editing deserves at least as much of the spotlight as AI.”

Bill Gates, in his December Year-in-Review 2018 blog post on a variety of technology issues he follows on a regular basis.

"AI is currently very, very stupid. It is really good at doing certain things which our brains can't handle, but it's not something we could press to do general-purpose reasoning involving things like analogies or creative thinking or jumping outside the box."

Andrew Moore, Google vice president – in comments on whether or not AI will replace humans anytime soon

 “The ethics of the experimenter can charitably be described as substandard: the experiment was wildly premature, focused on a medical condition which already has both treatment and prevention methods; was done in secret, and without either peer review or adequate consent; and was done without any credible plan to protect the resulting children (and their children, and their children’s children) from harm.” 

George Annas, MD, Director of the Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health on the announcement of secret research by a Chinese scientist using CRISPR technology to splice the genes of twins.

“Our societal silence over the last several years has been deafening.  As we enter the holiday season and a time of reflection, it seems to me that now is the time for a cacophony of compassion to rise up and overwhelm the people of our nation with the spirit of our founding mothers and fathers.”                               

Kevin Fickenscher, MD – in a moment of reflection on his own forefathers and foremothers who came by many routes “yearning to breathe free…”