THE
WHITE HOUSE
Office
of the Press Secretary
(Los
Angeles, California)
________________________________________________________________________
For
Immediate Release January 21, 2000
REMARKS
BY THE PRESIDENT
AT
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EVENT
California
Institute of Technology
Pasadena,
California
11:00
A.M. PST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much. Dr. Moore, President
Baltimore;
to the faculty and students at Caltech, and to people
involved
in NASA's JPL out here. I want to thank Representatives
Dreier,
Baca and Millender-McDonald for coming with me today,
and for the
work they do in your behalf back in Washington. I want
to thank three
members of our Science and Technology team for being here
-- my Science
Advisor Neal Lane; Dr. Rita Colwell, the NSF Director;
and my good
friend, the Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson, who
has done a great
job with our national labs to keep them being innovators
in fields from
computational science to environmental technology.
One person who would have liked to have been here today
and I can
tell you thinks that he would be a better representative
of our administration
on this topic is the Vice President. When we took office
together,
the fact that I was challenged scientifically and technologically
was standing joke. (Laughter.) And he wants all of you
to
know that he's campaigning all over the country with a
Palm 7 on his hip.
(Laughter.)
He wants you to know that he loves science and technology
so much,
he's not even angry that Caltech beat out Harvard for
top spot in the
U.S. News rankings this year. (Laughter.) I think it has
something to
do with the relative electoral votes of California and
Massachusetts. (Laughter.)
But before I came out here I told Dr. Moore and Dr. Baltimore
that
it was a real thrill for me to meet Dr. Moore, that even
I knew what
Moore's Law was; and that before the Vice President became
otherwise
occupied, we used to have weekly lunches and I'd talked
to him about
politics and he'd give me lectures about climate change.(Laughter.)
But we once got into this hilarious conversation about
the practical
applications of Moore's Law, like it explains why every
cable network
can double the number of talk shows every year that no
one wants to
listen to. (Laughter.) And so it's a real thrill for me
to be here. (Laughter.)
Actually, I come with some trepidation. An eight-year-old
child
met me at the airport, and she and her brother came with
their father,
who is a friend of mine, and she brought me a letter from
her third
grade class. And the letter had all these questions: What
was your
favorite book when you were in the third grade? What did
you collect
then? What do you collect now? And one of the questions
was, are
you ever nervous when you're speaking before large audiences.
And
the answer -- and I was writing all these answers so we
could
type up a letter -- I said, not usually. But I mean, I'm
sort of nervous
here today. (Laughter.) And I told somebody I was nervous,
one of
the wags back at the White House with a sense of humor,
and he said, well,
you know the Einstein millennial story, don't you -- trying
to help
me get unnervous. (Laughter.) I said, so I said, no --
you always learn
to be patient in the face of other people's jokes. It's
one of the
great social skills that an American can develop. (Laughter.)
So I said, no. And he said, well, God decides to give
America a
millennial gift, and the gift is to send Einstein back
to Earth for a few days to talk to ordinary folks, because
he was the greatest brain of the last millennium. And
they have the first meeting in a nice little hall like
this. And it's absolutely packed, and these three big,
burly guys push their way to the front, shoving everyone
else to the side. So Einstein politely takes them first
and he says to the first guy, well, what's your IQ, young
man? And he said 240. He said wonderful, let's talk about
how I thought up the theory of relativity. And they have
a terrific conversation.
The second guy, he says, what's your IQ? He said, 140.
He said,
let's talk about globalization and its impact on climate
change. And they had a terrific conversation. And the
third guy kind of hung his head, and he said, what's your
IQ? And he said, 40. And Einstein said, oh, don't worry.
You can always go into politics. (Laughter.)
I want you to know, though, in preparation for this day
I've been
spending a lot of time trying to get in touch with my
inner nerd. (Laughter and applause.) And my wife helped
me, because she's been having these Millennium Lectures
at the White House to discuss big things. And the other
night, she had Vince Cerf, who was one of the founders
of the Internet, and Eric Lander, who's helped to develop
many of the tools of modern genome research. And that
really got me thinking, and I want to say some more serious
things about that in a moment. And then my staff challenged
me to actually order Christmas gifts over the Internet.
And I did that. And while doing that, I learned that with
just a click of a mouse, I could actually order -- and
I did this, I'm embarrassed to say -- I ordered Arkansas
smoked ham and sausage delivered to my door. (Laughter.)
So I think the 21st century has more for me than I had
originally thought. (Laughter.)
As
all of you know, Albert Einstein spent a lot of time here
at Caltech in the 1930s. And three weeks ago, Time Magazine
crowned him the Person of the Century. The fact that he
won this honor over people like Franklin Roosevelt and
Mohandas Gandhi is not only an incredible testament to
the quantum leaps in knowledge that he achieved for all
humanity, but also for the 20th century's earth-shaking
advances in science and technology.
Just
as an aside, I'd like to say because we're here at Caltech, Einstein's contributions remind us of how greatly
American science and technology and, therefore, American
society have benefitted and continue to benefit from the
extraordinary gifts of scientists and engineers who are
born in other countries, and we should continue to welcome
them to our shores. (Applause.)
But
the reason so many of you live, work and study here is
that there are so many more questions yet to be answered:
How does the brain actually produce the phenomenon of
consciousness? How do we translate insights from neuroscience
into more productive learning environments for all our
children? Why do we age -- the question I ponder more
and more these days. (Laughter.) I looked at a picture
of myself when I was inaugurated the first time the other
day, and it scared me to death. (Laughter.) And so I wonder,
is this preprogrammed, or wear and tear? Are we alone
in the universe? What causes gamma ray bursts? What makes
up the missing mass of the universe? What's in those black
holes, anyway? And maybe the biggest question of all:
How in the wide world can you add $3 billion in market
capitalization simply by adding .com to the end of a name?
(Laughter.)
You
will find the answers to the serious questions I posed
and to many others. It was this brilliant Caltech community
that first located genes on chromosomes and unlocked the
secrets of chemical bonds and quarks. You were the propulsive
force behind jet flight and built America's first satellites.
You made it possible for us to manufacture microchips
of ever-increasing complexity and gave us our first guided
tour on the surface of Mars. With your new gravitational
wave observatory, you will open an entirely new window
on the mysteries of the universe, observing the propagating
ripples which Einstein predicted 84 years ago.
Today,
I came here to thank you for all you're doing to advance
the march of human knowledge and to announce what we intend
to do to accelerate that march by greatly increasing our
national investments in science and technology.
The
budget I will submit to Congress in just a few days will
include a $2.8 billion increase in our 21st century research
fund. This will support a $1 billion increase in biomedical
research for the National Institutes of Health; $675 million,
which is double the previous largest dollar increase for
the National Science Foundation in its entire 50-year
history; and major funding increases in areas from information
technology to space exploration to the development of
cleaner sources of energy.
This
budget makes research at our nation's universities a top
priority, with an increase in funding of more than $1
billion. University-based research provides the kind of
fundamental insights that are most important in any new
technology or treatment. It helps to produce the next
generation of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs. And
we intend to give university-based research a major lift.
The budget supports increases not only in biomedical research,
but also in all scientific and engineering fields. As
you know, advances in one field are often dependent on
breakthroughs in other disciplines. For example, advances
in computer science are helping us to develop drugs more
rapidly, and to move from sequencing the human genome
to better understanding the functions of individual genes.
My
budget supports a major new national nanotechnology initiative
worth $500 million. Caltech is no stranger to the idea
of nanotechnology, the ability to manipulate matter at
the atomic and molecular level. Over 40 years ago, Caltech's own Richard Symonds asked, what would happen if
we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want
them? Well, you can see one example of this in this sign
behind me, that Dr. Lane furnished for Caltech to hang
as the backdrop for this speech. It's the Western hemisphere
in gold atoms. But I think you will find more enduring
uses for nanotechnology.
Just
imagine, materials with 10 times the strength of steel
and only a fraction of the weight; shrinking all the information
at the Library of Congress into a device the size of a
sugar cube; detecting cancerous tumors that are only a
few cells in size. Some of these research goals will take
20 or more years to achieve. But that is why -- precisely
why -- as Dr. Baltimore said, there is such a critical
role for the federal government.
As I announced yesterday, this budget also includes an
historic initiative to make higher education more affordable.
I am well aware of the fact that I would not have become
President of the United States without loans and grants
and jobs that helped me get through college and law school;
and that more and more, given the cost of higher education,
a higher and higher percentage of our students need more
of all those things. This has been a virtual obsession
for me ever since I became President. I was determined
to leave office saying we had opened the doors of college
to all Americans.
We have come a long way, by changing the student loan
program to make it less expensive and to give young people
more options for paying off their loans, including as
a percentage of their income when they leave school. We've
increased the number of work-study grants from $700,000
to $1 million. We've dramatically increased the Pell Grant
program, and the HOPE Scholarship tax credit and the Lifetime
Learning tax credits we adopted in 1997 last year alone
had almost 5 million beneficiaries in institutions of
higher education in the United States. (Applause.)
Yesterday, I proposed that, for the first time, we make
college tuition tax deductible, and that we do it in a
way that would benefit even more people on more modest
incomes so that they could get the same 28-percent benefit,
even if they're in the 15-percent tax category. I think
this is very important. (Applause.)
The
budget contains another increase in Pell grants, special
initiatives to help minority students get into science
and engineering and graduate. (Applause.) Special efforts
-- that is basically a test program for several thousand
students now -- to try to do something about the extraordinarily
high dropout rate from college.
Now,
over two-thirds of the high school graduates are actually
going to go into college this year. That's an increase
of over 10 percent in the last seven years. That's quite
a large increase in a short time. But the dropout rate
has increased correspondingly. We want to know why. Is
it for financial reasons? Is it because people weren't
prepared? Could they all be just idiosyncratic personal
reasons? And we intend to do everything we can with a
very large test group to see what we can do to turn this
situation around.
And, finally, we're going to double the size of our Gear-Up
program to 1.4 million young people. That's the program
where people in universities and college all across America
mentor middle-school kids who are at risk to try to help
them develop the skills and the belief that they can go
to college, and simultaneously to tell them and their
parents exactly what they can expect in the way of aid
under current law if they do go, so they will know. Many
people still don't know that the barriers to their going
on to college have been removed. So I hope you will also
support this part of our budget, because the young people
of our country and their families need it. In addition
to announcing our new research budget and our efforts
to make colleges more affordable, I'd like to try to achieve
one other mission here today. First, I want to take a
step back to acknowledge that we have not done a good
enough job in helping all Americans to understand why
we need very, very large investment in science and technology.
Far
too many of our citizens think science is something done
by men and women who are in white lab coats behind closed
doors that somehow leads to satellite TV and Dolly the
sheep. And it's all a mystery. It is our responsibility
to open the world of science to more of our fellow citizens;
to help them understand the great questions science is
seeking to answer and to help them see how those answers
will actually affect their lives and their children's
lives in profoundly important and positive ways.
First,
we have to make sure Americans understand the contributions
science and technology are making right now to the present
level of economic growth, something Dr. Baltimore referred
to. For example, because of our early investments in the
Internet, America now leads the world in information technology,
an industry that now accounts for a third of our economic
growth, although only 8 percent of our work force; that
generates jobs that pay 80 percent more than the private
sector average.
If
you look at that -- what does that mean to ordinary people,
and what does it mean to the nature of the economy we're
living in? I have never told the American people that
we had repealed the ordinary laws of supply and demand,
or the business cycle. But we have stretched them quite
a lot.
In
February, next month, we will have the longest economic
expansion in the history of the United States -- outstripping
even those that required full mobilization for war. Now,
part of that is because we have pursued, I believe, sound
policies -- to get rid of the deficit; to start running
surpluses, the first back-to-back surpluses in 42 years;
to keep our markets open, with 270 trade agreements; to
argue, as I have, that not only exports are benefited
by open markets, we also benefit from the imports, because
they're a powerful brake on inflation and allow us to
continue to grow.
But
the real reason this thing keeps going on and on and on
is that -- all we did in the government was to set the
conditions, and provide the tools, for the American people
to succeed. The real reason is the exponential growth
in information technology, and how it is rifling through
every other sector of our economy and reinforcing the
material science revolution, which proceeded it by a few
years, but which continues to the present day.
When I became President, there were only 50 sites on the
Worldwide Web -- 50. When I became President -- that seemed
like a long time ago to the students, but the rest of
you will know -- (laughter) -- it's just like yesterday.
There are now over 50 million. Think of it. In seven years,
from 50 to over 50 million. It is changing everything
about the way we work and live and relate to each other.
I was in Northern California a few weeks ago with a lot
of really fascinating young people who work with E-bay
-- a lot of you have probably bought things, maybe you've
even sold things on E-bay. But for example, one of the
things I learned is that in addition to the employees
of E-bay, there are now 20,000 people whose primary source
of income is buying and selling on E-bay. They do it for
a living. And several of them -- not insubstantial number
of them -- were on welfare before they found a way to
bring their entrepreneurial skills to bare by trading
on E-bay. It has changed everything.
So
we have to say to people, if you like the fact that we
have the lowest unemployment and welfare rolls in 30 years,
the lowest minority unemployment rates ever recorded,
the lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years, the lowest
poverty rates in 20 years, the lowest single household
poverty rate in 46 years, you have to understand that
all that, at least in large part, is because of the ability
of the discoveries of science and technology to rifle
through our ordinary lives. And it is very, very important
that all of us do a better job of that.
I
have proposed in this budget a 36 percent increase in
information technology research alone, so that researchers
will be able to tackle a wide array of other challenges.
How do we find, precisely, the piece of information we're
looking for in an ever-larger ocean of raw data. How do
we design computers that are usable by everyone including
people with disabilities.
One of the most fascinating relationships I've developed
-- we were talking on the plane ride out here about one
of the great things about being President is nearly anybody
will come to talk to you -- once, anyway. (Laughter.)
And we were talking about all the people I had been privileged
to meet in the last seven years. You know, I have developed
quite a good personal friendship with Steven Hawking,
who, as all of you know, has lived longer with Lou Gehrig's
disease, as far as we know, than any person who's ever
lived -- partly, I am convinced, because of not only the
size of his brain, but the size of his heart. But it is
fascinating to see what technology has permitted this
man to do.
Just
a few years ago, he could have had the biggest brain in
the world, and no one could have known it, because it
could not have gotten out. There is no speaking capacity,
almost no movement left. He can just move his thumb, and
hold in his hand this remarkable little tracer that goes
through a whole dictionary of words that he has, that
he runs through with rapid speed. He picks the word he
wants, puts the sentences together, and then an automated
voice tells you what he just said.
How
can we make it even easier for him? How can we make it
even easier for other people? This will be a huge issue.
Make no mistake about it, the liberation of Americans
with disabilities is also in no small measure the product
of the revolution in science and technology.
There are also other uses. I read the other day that manufacturers
are soon going to introduce a refrigerator that can scan
the bar codes of empty packages and expired goods -- (laughter)
-- and order new groceries for you over the Internet.
(Laughter.) Now, everybody who's ever poured out a carton
of bad milk will love this. (Laughter.) You don't have
to smell your bad milk anymore. It won't be long before
the computer will refuse to order what's bad for you --
(laughter) -- and only pick items off Dean Ornish's diet.
And then we'll all be in great shape. (Laughter.)
The second thing I think we have to do is let Americans
know how investments in science and technology, broadly
stated, will allow us to lead longer, healthier lives.
Everybody knows now that you can put money into cancer
research -- and thank God we've discovered two of the
genes that are high predictors of breast cancer, for example,
in the last couple of years -- but we need for more Americans
to understand why we need a broad research agenda in science
and technology, for the health of Americans. (Applause.)
In the 20th century, American life expectancy went from
47 years to almost 77 years, thanks to penicillin and
vaccines for many childhood diseases. We were talking
the other day about the impact -- I'm old enough to remember
the first polio vaccine. And I remember how our mothers
herded us in line and made us stand there waiting for
our shot. And it was like they were all holding their
breath, praying and hoping that we would get our shot
before we got polio. It's something that young people
today can hardly imagine, but it hung like a cloud over
the families of my parents' generation. Now, we have this
incredible life expectancy -- today, the average American
who lives to be 65 has a life expectancy of 83 -- already.
And we are clearly on the cusp of greater advances.
Later
this year, researchers expect to finish the first complete
sequencing of the genome -- all 3 billion letters and
80,000 genes that make up our DNA code. Since so many
diseases have a genetic component, the completion of this
project will clearly lead to a revolution in our ability
to detect, treat and prevent many diseases. For example,
patients with some forms of leukemia and breast cancer
soon may receive sophisticated new drugs that elegantly
actually target the precise cancer cells with little or
no risk to healthy cells. That will change everything.
Our
new trove of genomic data may even allow us to identify
and cure most genetic diseases before a child is even
born. Most people just take it as a given now that within
the next few years, when young mothers bring their babies
home from the hospital, they will bring along a genetic
map of their children's makeup, what the problems are,
what the challenges are, what the strengths are. It will
be scary to some extent, but it also plainly will allow
us to raise our children in a way that will enhance the
length and quality of their lives.
But
it's important to recognize that we never could have had
the revolution in the genome project without the revolution
in computer science as well, that they intersected. Research
at the intersection between biomedical research and engineering
will also lead to amazing breakthroughs. Already, scientists
are working on -- we've seen it on television now -- an
artificial retina to treat certain kinds of blindness,
and methods of directly stimulating the spinal cord to
allow people who are paralyzed to work. Now, you think
of that.
Last year, for the first time, to give you an idea of
the impact of technology on traditional medical research,
last year, for the first time, medical researchers transplanted
nerves from the limbs to the spine of a laboratory animal
that had its spine severed and achieved movement in the
lower limbs for the first time. That had never happened
before.
Now,
because of advances in the intersection between science
and engineering, we may not have to keep working on that.
We may actually be able to program a chip that will stimulate
the exact movements that were prevented by the severing
or the injury of a spine. And all the people that we have
seen hobbled by these terrible injuries might be able
to get up and walk. Because there was medical research,
yes, but there was also research on the engineering, nonbiological
components of this endeavor. We have to do a better job
of explaining that to the American people.
Third, advances in science and technology are helping
us to preserve our environment in ways that preserve more
sustainable and widespread economic growth. And that is
very important.
Let
me just give you an example. Not far from here in Southern
California, a couple years ago the Department of Energy,
working with the National Homebuilders and HUD, helped
to construct a moderate- and low-income housing community,
with glass in the windows that keeps out four or five
times as much heat or cold, and lets in even more light.
And that, coupled with the latest insulation technology
and the latest lighting in the house, enabled the houses
to be marketed to people of modest incomes, with the promise
that their electric bills would average 40 percent below
what they would in a home of that size built in the traditional
manner. I can tell you that after two years, the power
bills are averaging 65 percent less. And we can't build
enough houses for the people that want them.
The
Detroit Auto Show this year is showcasing cars that, I'm
proud to say, were developed as part of our partnership
for new generation vehicles that the Vice President headed
up, and we started way back in '93. We brought in the
auto workers and the auto companies and we said, look,
instead of having a big fight about this, why don't we
work together and figure out how to use technology to
dramatically increase mileage. And a lot of you are probably
familiar -- they're using fuel-injection engines, which
cuts a lot of the greenhouse gas emissions; some using
developed mixed-fuel cars that start on electricity, switch
to fuel after you reach a certain stage, and then go back
to electricity when you slow down back to that speed,
because 70 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions are
used in starting and stopping cars.
And there are all kinds of other things being developed.
But this year the Detroit Auto Show has cars making 70,
80 miles a gallon, that are four-seater cars, that will
be on the market in a couple of years. You can buy Japanese
cars this year on the market that get about 70 miles to
the gallon, but they're small two-seaters. Last year I
went and saw cars that are 500 to 1,000 pounds lighter
than traditional cars, and score at least as well on all
the damage tests -- again because of the revolution in
material science, with composite materials being used
in the cars.
And
the big thing that's coming up in this area is, before
you know it, I believe we will crack the chemical barriers
to truly efficient production of biomass fuels. One of
the reasons you see this whole debate -- in the presidential
campaign, if you're following it, you know the big argument
is, is it a waste of money to push ethanol or not, if
it takes seven gallons of gasoline to make eight gallons
of ethanol. But they're on the verge of a chemical breakthrough
that is analogous to what was done when crude oil could
be transferred efficiently into gasoline. And when that
happens, you'll be able to make eight gallons of biomass
-- not just from corn, but from weeds, from rice hulls,
from anything -- for about one gallon of fuel. That will
be the equivalent therefore, in environmental terms, of
cars that get hundreds of miles a gallon. And the world,
the environmental world, will be changed forever. And
that's -- one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions are
in transportation.
Now,
I just want to kind of go off the script a little to hammer
this home, because big ideas in science matter. And once
you make a big breakthrough, then thousands and thousands
of things follow that have immense practical significance.
But you must also know and believe that being in the grip
of a big idea that is wrong can be absolutely disastrous.
So
today, in Washington and in much of the world, there is
a debate that goes something like this: The overwhelming
evidence of science is that the climate is warming at
an unsustainable rate due to human activity. And then
there's this old idea, which says, well, that's really
too bad, but a country can't grow rich or stay rich and
sustain a middle-class lifestyle, unless every year it
puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than it
did the year before. And you certainly can't drastically
cut them, and maintain your level of wealth.
Our administration spent hundreds of thousands of dollars
last year complying with requests to appear before a House
subcommittee that believes that our passion about climate
change is some sort of subversive plot to wreck the American
economy. (Laughter.) Either that or -- you know, I've
been reading too many kooky books or something. (Laughter.)
They think it's just crazy. Why? Because they can't face
the fact that we would do anything to hurt the American
economy, and they really believed it would. So I would
argue to you that here is a place where we're in the grip
of an idea that is wrong.
Our
efforts to get India and China and other big countries
that will soon surpass us in greenhouse gas emissions
to cooperate with us, not in regulation, but in new technologies,
to help them grow rich differently, always keep running
up against the barrier of suspicious officials who believe
somehow this is kind of an American plot to keep them
poor. Why? Because they're in the grip of an idea that
isn't right anymore. It is simply not true that to grow
rich, you have to put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
So again, I say we have to do a better job of explaining
the contribution that science and technology can make
to saving the planet and allowing us to still have prosperous
lives -- and, I would argue, to allow us to have more
prosperous lives and better lives that would otherwise
be the case, certainly within 40 to 50 years, if we don't
act and act now. This is profoundly important. (Applause.)
Finally, I think we have to do a better job of having
an open debate about the responsibilities that all these
advances and discoveries will clearly impose: The same
genetic revolution that can offer new hope for millions
of Americans could also be used to deny people health
insurance; cloning human beings; information technology
which helps to educate children and provide telemedicine
to rural communities could also be used to create disturbingly
detailed profiles of every move our citizens make on line.
The federal government, I think, has a role to play in
meeting these challenges as well. That's why we've put
forward strict rules and penalties to limit the use and
release of medical records; why we've worked with Congress
to ban the cloning of human beings, while preserving our
ability to use the morally and medically acceptable applications
of cloning technology, which I believe are profoundly
important; why we're working with the Internet industry
to ensure that consumers -- consumers -- have control
over how their personal information is used.
It's up to all of us to figure out how to use the new
powers that science and technology give us in a responsible
way. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we
should. It is incumbent, therefore, upon both scientists
and public servants to involve the public in a great debate
to ensure that science serves humanity -- always -- and
never the other way around.
On this campus nearly 70 years ago, Albert Einstein said,
"Never forget this, in the midst of your diagrams and
equations: concern for man himself and his fate must always
form the chief interest of all technical endeavors." Today,
at the dawn of this new millennium, we see for all of
you, particularly the young people in this audience, an
era of unparalleled promise and possibility. Our relentless
quest to understand what we do not yet know, which has
defined Americans from our beginnings, will have more
advances in the 21st century than at any other time in
history. We must be wise as we advance.
I told you earlier that the First Lady sponsored a Millennium
Evening with Vince Cerf and Professor Lander. One of the
most interesting things he said about his genomic research
confirmed not other scientific research, but the teachings
of almost every religion in the world. He said that, genetically,
we are 99.9 percent the same. And, he said, furthermore,
that the genetic differences among individuals within
a given racial or ethnic group are greater than the differences
between groups as a whole -- suggesting that we are not
only our brothers' and sisters' keepers, but in fundamental
genetic ways, we are our brothers and sisters.
And
I leave you with this thought. I think the supreme irony
of our time is that I can come here as President and have
the high honor of discussing these unfathomable advances
wrought by the human intellect, that have occurred and
the even greater ones yet to occur, in a world where the
biggest social problem is the oldest demon of human society
-- we are still afraid of people who aren't like us. And
fear leads to distrust, and distrust leads to dehumanization,
and dehumanization leads to violence.
And it is really quite interesting that the end of the
Cold War has marked an upsurge in ethnic and racial and
tribal and religious hatred and conflict around the world;
and that even in our own country we see countless examples
of hate crimes from people who believe that others are
different and, therefore, to be distrusted and feared
and dehumanized.
You have the power to put science and technology at work
advancing the human condition as never before. Always
remember to keep your values at the core of what you do.
And tell every one of your fellow citizens, and indeed
people with whom you come in contact all across the world,
that every single scientific advance confirms over and
over again the most important facts of life -- our common
humanity.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END 11:40 A.M. PST
