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I believe we can prevent or delay most disease until the 9th or 10th decade. The goal is to prevent anything that can affect your quality of life prior to those years! By the time many of us get to the 9th or 10th decade, who knows where the new medical and science will take us? I am an optimist!

Infectious disease exists at this intersection between real science, medicine, public health, social policy, and human conflict. There's a tendency of people to try and make a group out of those who have the disease. It makes people who don't have the disease feel safer.

I think that that's the wisest thing - to prevent illness before we try to cure something.

Left to their own devices, epidemic diseases tend to follow the same basic process: A virus or bacteria infects a host, who typically becomes sick and in many cases dies. Along the way, the host infects others.

I believe it is better to be prepared for illness than to wait for a cure.

If we can contain and monitor animal viruses at an earlier stage - when they're first entering human populations, preferably before they've had a chance to become human-adapted, certainly before they've had a chance to spread - we can head off pandemics altogether.

In today's world, new infections and diseases can spread across the country and even across the world in a matter of days, or even hours, making early detection critical.

With some diseases, like type 2 diabetes, if people get alerted early, they can take steps to avert getting sick.

Pandemics do not occur randomly. From malaria and influenza to AIDS and SARS, the lethal microbes have come, in the first instance, from animals, especially wild animals. And we increasingly know which parts of the world pose the greatest risk for future incursions.

We will talk about cooperation to destroy the disease as soon as we can.