John Sulston Quotes

If you patent a discovery which is unique, say a human gene or even just one particular function of a human gene, then you are actually creating a monopoly, and that's not the purpose of the world of patents.

It is very clear that the present system of innovation for medicines is very inefficient and really somewhat corrupt. It benefits shareholders over patients; it produces for the rich markets and not for the poor and does not produce for minority diseases.

I don't want a few extra weeks of life at enormous cost, for example, when it comes to the end.

If we understand the worm, we understand life.

In science, as in business, there must be structures that ensure the well endowed do not use their position to block competition.

Muriel, my mother, was my main confidant. She was a teacher of English at Watford grammar school but took a break while my sister Madeleine and I were children. She held court in the kitchen, and we talked about everything.

The Wellcome Trust is a hugely important organisation, and it is vital that its fundraising continues unabated.

I'm pleased that some economists and sociologists are beginning to talk about, for example, alternative measures of human well-being - alternative, that is, to GDP, on which the world runs.

Many people thought that, given my knowledge of the egg, I should analyse embryonic mutants.

The free market is the epitome of life itself. This is something that all scientists recognise because science itself operates on free market lines.

When results are shared freely amongst the biological community, as has been done for the worm and the Human Genome Projects, specialist scientists can move much more rapidly towards their goals.

The currencies of science are discoveries and ideas; the rewards are the excitement of going where nobody has been before and, if one is inclined to such things, the kudos of peer acclaim, plus funds to do more research.

What is the purpose of being human and alive without doing new things?

Science and the many benefits that science has produced have played a crucial part in our history and produced vast improvements to human welfare.

The myth is that IP rights are as important as our rights in castles, cars, and corn oil. IP is supposedly intended to encourage inventors and the investment needed to bring their products to the clinic and marketplace.

An awful lot of food is thrown away. This you can call a spillover. It doesn't sort of enter into our economic system because it's a consequence of running things in a highly competitive way: the free market, global pricing and so on.

It is not a Pandora's box that science opens; it is, rather, a treasure chest. We, humanity, can choose whether or not to take out the discoveries and use them, and for what purpose.

When it came to choice of subjects, science was obvious - since I was uninterested in anything else - but a decision that caused consternation in some eyes was my demand to take biology for A-level.

Our work on C. elegans emphasized the benefits of sharing large amounts of information. We took a global approach to discover the mechanisms that led to the development of the worm.

The only thing I have retained from my upbringing - I did not retain the religious element - is the idea that you do not do things for money.

We can choose to address the twin issues of population and consumption to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption.

On my mother's side, I come from Midlands engineers and, on my father's, from tenant farmers near Oxford.

Whilst worthy in themselves, applications shouldn't be the only way to drive basic research.

As far back as I remember, and earlier, I was an artisan, a maker and doer. Mechanically minded, my parents said.