Notice: ob_end_flush(): Failed to delete and flush buffer. No buffer to delete or flush in /home1/ntptuqmy/public_html/quotes/includes/header_html.php on line 6 Pardis Sabeti Quotes - IQDb - Internet Quotes Database
See, Ebola, like all threats to humanity, it's fueled by mistrust and distraction and division. When we build barriers amongst ourselves, and we fight amongst ourselves, the virus thrives. But unlike all threats to humanity, Ebola is one where we're actually all the same. We're all in this fight together.
I'm looking for all the things that are beneficial in the human genome. Everything that I do is based on a very simple principle: things that are beneficial will spread through populations very quickly.
It is of course very difficult to see relations between America and Iran becoming increasingly tense and knowing that it is not the people of the countries but a subset of leaders and radicals that are causing such strife. I am hoping that the spirit of the people will triumph.
It's just difficult to see that people want to be like the actors and the performers and the politicians who are - who they see all the time, but the people that are probably having the most fun are the writers and the directors and the producers and the scientists, right, the people in the back that are getting to do the creative process.
My family fled Iran in October 1978 as a result of the coming revolution when I was two years old. In the early days, my entire family lived together in a very crowded house, where I shared a room with my sister, cousin, and grandmother, and we would all listen to my grandmother tell stories before bedtime.
My father took one of the toughest jobs in the government because he cared about his nation more than himself. His courage and conviction have always driven me to want to make a difference.
My scientific work is much more practically minded - to change something, to effect something. And the music I do is much more soft power, about changing minds.
My sister taught me addition and subtraction and multiplication and division, so by the time I got to school, I knew it all, and when we'd do the times tables, I was just focused on doing it faster than anybody else. I already had the information, so it just got me to focus on excellence.
Over the years, we settled into American life and embraced it fully. But having come from a different culture, I didn't know the boundaries of American culture. Which is that, as a girl, you didn't play football or soccer at lunch with the boys, and to be cool, you didn't get into math Olympiad.
I think I first encountered Ebola from the movie 'Outbreak.' Then there was the book 'The Hot Zone.' It's the type of thing you either read and say, 'Oh wow, that's terrifying,' or you read it and say, 'Oh wow, I want to do that.' I read it and said, 'Oh wow, I want do that.'
So much of the physical world has been explored. But the deluge of data I get to investigate really lets me chart new territory. Genetic data from people living today forms an archaeological record of what happened to their ancestors 10,000 years ago.
The Ebola epidemic was the most frightening outbreak I have witnessed in my lifetime, and I believe it was necessary to react globally as strongly as we did.
The process of discovery in my field is very incremental. But there are moments when you realize you know something about the world nobody else knows. That's extraordinarily exhilarating.
There are so many aspects to science that I couldn't give up - the rigor, the discoveries, the teaching. The impact that science has on the world around us is something I'm enthralled with. I don't think anyone could ever take that out of me.
There is - I will just say that there was a disastrous day where I discovered really what radioactivity is and that just because you don't see it doesn't mean that it's not everywhere, so - Yeah. I was a slow learner for sure.
Unlike some viruses, we don't know what the natural reservoir is for Ebola. A lot of people think it's bats, but it's still very controversial; it could have been circulating in insects, in an environment, or in individuals.
When I was working on my Ph.D., I developed a computer algorithm to look for rapid changes in populations' DNA. Our DNA changes constantly over generations, but if certain changes spread through a population more quickly than others, they are probably the beneficial results of natural selection. This is the protection we give ourselves to survive.
You get these moments of thrill. There you are, at 3:00 in the morning, and you know something about how we evolved that nobody else in the world knows. It's a thrill of discovery. You make this breakthrough, and you find something. It's this wonderful, wonderful scavenger hunt when you got to the end. It's just so great to be a scientist.
