Mary Woodward Lasker Award
for Public Service

In 1965, I stopped at the London School of Tropical Medicine on my way to live in Africa. Of the many people I talked to, as I desperately tried to understand the health conditions I faced in Africa, was a Dr. Cochrane who had retired as Medical Director of Vellore Medical School in India and who had authored the definitive textbook on leprosy. Having asked a simple question on leprosy, I was trapped for the next three days at his house reviewing leprosy slides since he felt he would be a failure if I left London knowing as little as I did. It was the week that I discovered that the compulsion to teach far surpasses the compulsion to learn.

And so, I feel the compulsion to pass on six lessons I have learned, each building on the previous one, to illustrate my gratitude to the Lasker Foundation.

First, Pope Clement IV asked Roger Bacon, in the 13th century, to summarize science. Two conclusions from Bacon were that science lacked a moral compass and that the Church was not providing it. If Roger Bacon would return today he would still be puzzled by a society that worships science but hasn't figured out how to provide a moral compass.

Second, Roger Bacon had great vision, predicting automobiles and airplanes, but he could not have anticipated the joy of science in 2001, where many are engaged and many benefit. To work in the field of science is a gift, a privilege, an unqualified joy…but with some strings attached. I tell students they should love science…absolutely love it…but, they should not worship it.

Third, Einstein emphasized that the right to search for truth implies a duty to not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. We are urged to deal in whole truths.

Fourth, Primo Levi, author of Survival at Auschwitz and The Periodic Table, took an additional step by saying that the right to have truth is tied to the responsibility not only to acknowledge the whole truth, but even beyond that, to use it. He said the person who knows how to reduce torment, but doesn't, becomes the tormentor.

Fifth, this obligation, to not become the tormentor, is global. As Einstein said, "Nationalism is an infantile disease." He called it the measles of mankind. And so the whole truth involves an obligation to use our science for the benefit of everyone, wherever they live. So what is it that is better than science? Better than science is science with heart, science with ethics, science with equity, science with justice.

Sixth, not one of us can do much alone. The power is in the accumulation of every last one of us, bound together in shared goals, adding our paltry daily allowance until the contributions of millions of people in research and academics finally develops a vaccine. And where additional millions construct the structure of industry, providing glassware, needles and syringes, airplanes, vehicles, bills of lading and a thousand other details. And millions more provide the health education, the education system, the vaccinators and the organizers to give the vaccine.

Col. Thomas Allen sent the 5th Wisconsin company into battle during the Civil War saying, when you hear the signal, march double time towards the Confederates and halt only when you hear the signal. And then he added, "You will never hear the signal to halt."

Global health is the sum total of the science and the successful application of that science. It requires the effort of optimists because we will never hear the signal to stop.

And so I say thanks for recognizing, not me, but the global application of health sciences. For recognizing the coalitions that make it possible…from bench scientists to field workers…the millions working anonymously…the optimists in millions of communities. On their behalf, thank you very much.