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We now have poured in an enormous amount of resources into cancer. The National Cancer Institute Project, you know, runs about $5 billion a year. That's a large amount of money, but let's not be grandiose about the amount of money we're actually spending on a problem that is attacking us at the most fundamental level of the human species.

We've got to rebuild human hearts - and persuade people that hope isn't just possible, but essential.

We will naturally pursue our goals on the strength of our own resources, skills and enterprise. But, we know that we will be more successful when we do this in partnership with the world.

The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it's possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success.

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition - put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes - is improving because of innovation.

Our focus should be on the more than 70 cures and treatments that have been successfully produced from other forms of stem cell research that do not destroy a human life.

We already have many of the technologies and tools that we need to build a sustainable future. What we don't have is a new way of thinking, and that's really the hardest part.

You can't look at the problem and say, 'I want them to do more, better, faster miracles - and not invest in research, not invest in development, and have those miracles delivered to me free.' It's unrealistic.

We've had great successes, but our future is not about our past success. It's going to be about whether we will invent things that are really going to drive our future.