The pace of progress in biology creates a foundation that naturally gets picked up by the biotech and pharmaceutical industry to solve rich-world diseases. This is attractive science. It's science that people want to work on.

China is certainly an important player in the global economy, and a widespread AIDS epidemic would threaten that growth.

If your culture doesn't like geeks, you are in real trouble.

The government is somewhat inept, but the private sector is inept in general. How many companies do venture capitalists invest in that go poorly? By far most of them. However, every once in a while a Google or a Microsoft comes out, so people keep giving them money.

You've got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code.

People in business understand paying money to be more efficient. You can bootstrap markets where the devices are too expensive at first because these are so valuable to some people.

Taking a look back, one big reqret is, I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world. The appalling disparities of health and wealth and opportunity that condemned millions of people to the lives of despair. I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas and economics, and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences. But humanities greatest advances are not in its discoveries, but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.