Mark Walport Quotes

Industrialisation, mass transit, and the Internet are technological revolutions that have reshaped lives, nations, and the planet.

- Mark Walport

Of course methane is a fossil fuel, but as long as it is burned efficiently and fugitive emissions of methane gas are minimised, it is a less harmful fossil fuel than coal and oil and is an important way-station on the global journey towards low-carbon energy.

- Mark Walport

Banks and credit agencies learn continuously about the purchases we make. This is convenient and diminishes the risk of theft. It also means that banks can know more about our lifestyle than our close relatives.

- Mark Walport

I am honoured to be appointed as the first chief executive of UKRI. My ambition is to make UKRI the world's leading research and innovation public funding agency.

- Mark Walport

My job is to advise politicians, elected officials, and government ministries of the best way to deal with important issues, both localized, national, and the grand challenges facing humanity.

- Mark Walport

Distributed ledgers are inherently harder to attack because instead of a single database, there are multiple shared copies of the same database, so a cyber stack would have to attack all the copies simultaneously to be successful.

- Mark Walport

Distributed ledger technologies have the potential to help governments to collect taxes, deliver benefits, issue passports, record land registries, assure the supply chain of goods, and generally ensure the integrity of government records and services.

- Mark Walport

If you look at U.K. science, we collaborate with people across the whole world, and it's extremely important we continue to do so in the future.

- Mark Walport

Science, engineering, and technology discovers and invents new ways of doing things - but it doesn't dictate how we should do them.

- Mark Walport

We may know the chemical structure of medicinal drugs, but we frequently have a very incomplete understanding of how they work.

- Mark Walport

No one likes doing primate experiments, but some research can only be done on monkeys.

- Mark Walport

Forensic science offers great potential, as it draws on almost every discipline and, in doing so, creates widespread opportunity for innovation.

- Mark Walport

Forensic techniques are enormously useful in a wide range of fields outside the criminal justice system.

- Mark Walport

We clearly have to reduce harmful energy emissions. Everyone acknowledges we simply can't switch off fossil fuels overnight.

- Mark Walport

The Wellcome Trust will retain a level of financial flexibility which will enable us to react quickly to unexpected developments and new ideas.

- Mark Walport

New technology creates a new marketplace of words, creating totally new words and changing the meaning and application of existing ones. In doing so, it has a potent opportunity to create new misconceptions and confusion.

- Mark Walport

I've never been a proponent of something monolithic.

- Mark Walport

The question is, are there useful things that we can do with the results of a genome sequence that would bring benefit? And the answer is, today, should the majority of people go and have their genome sequenced? Probably not. But are there particular circumstances in which genome sequencing is really helpful? Yes, there are.

- Mark Walport

Common sense, proportionality, and judgment are the skills we must seek in those we choose to regulate our lives.

- Mark Walport

Cities are central to the shaping and delivery of national policy objectives, and in return, they are the places where social, environmental, and economic policies play out in practice.

- Mark Walport

The European Parliament must send a clear sign that it recognises the importance of embryonic stem cell research.

- Mark Walport

It would be silly not to admit that there are some sections of the public who are unconvinced by the benefits or have doubts about the motives behind it. We have to be clear that GM is not all about profits for multinational companies.

- Mark Walport

Wellcome Trust focuses on supporting outstanding researchers, accelerating the application of research, and exploring medicine in historical and cultural contexts. We believe passionately that breakthroughs emerge when the most talented researchers are given the resources and freedom they need to pursue their goals.

- Mark Walport

Science, engineering, and technology have transformed the infrastructure of the modern world and have a vital role to play at the heart of policy making.

- Mark Walport

The best approach to risk is to identify and manage it.

- Mark Walport

Henry Wellcome certainly was a talented character with a colorful and amazing personal story.

- Mark Walport

Wellcome Collection will be an exciting place in which to explore themes of human well-being, starting with the powerful collections of Sir Henry Wellcome.

- Mark Walport

We are extraordinarily lucky in the U.K. to have inherited a diverse range of cities that bear the imprints of many centuries of human habitation.

- Mark Walport

We take it for granted that because our shelves and supermarkets are heaving with food that there are no problems with food security. But we have limited land in the U.K., and climate disruption and population growth are putting pressure on food supply.

- Mark Walport

We're learning how infections are travelling around the world and, sadly, how cholera in Haiti was brought in by U.N. peacekeeping forces from south Asia.

- Mark Walport

Living in areas with a high population density does not need to be synonymous with overcrowding. Manhattan has an extremely dense population and is considered by many to be a highly desirable place to live.

- Mark Walport

When the correct tests are done, GM products are as safe as their non-GM counterparts.

- Mark Walport

There is a particular set of values commonly associated with being professional. Experience, expertise, trustworthiness, wisdom, and good judgement are all attributes aspired to by senior professional people, be they doctors, engineers, lawyers, civil servants, or the clergy.

- Mark Walport

As a medical student in the 1970s, I was taught that the foundations of diagnosis and treatment were to take a detailed history and to perform a comprehensive clinical examination.

- Mark Walport

Sharing data allows us to research, communicate, consume media, buy and sell, play games, and more. In return, businesses develop products, scientists undertake research, and governments use data to enable voting, inform policies, collect tax, and provide better public services.

- Mark Walport

Maximum distribution of research findings is essential to maximise their impact.

- Mark Walport

It is a fiction to imagine that the haphazard paper chits of old are more private than the modern digital alternative. Paper records have always presented a security risk.

- Mark Walport

Many families would like to avoid burdening future generations with inherited diseases such as haemophilia or severe developmental disorders. But most would think it wrong to edit the genes that influence the 'normal' range of human variation, from eye colour to intelligence or athletic ability.

- Mark Walport

The involvement of clinicians, researchers, and, most importantly, the thousands of people who have donated DNA samples will help us to correlate genetic variation with individual variation in health and disease and help to deliver on the long-term promise of the Human Genome Project.

- Mark Walport

If you look at my track record as government chief scientific advisor, I've always recognized that all of the sciences are important to all of research, and we need a balance.

- Mark Walport

There is usually a long interval between important scientific discoveries and impact on human health.

- Mark Walport

The problem of poor vision has gone unnoticed for too long - it's astounding that 700 years after glasses were first invented, there are still 2.5 billion people across the world without access to something as simple as eye screening or a pair of glasses.

- Mark Walport

A computer, by definition, cannot be held accountable for anything because there is no mechanism to hold it to account, short of turning off the electricity supply or destroying the hardware. Only humans can be accountable.

- Mark Walport

The U.K. is fortunate in its geographical position. We're an island. But we are living in a completely interconnected world where disruptions in countries far away will have major impacts.

- Mark Walport

Public trust is a vital condition for artificial intelligence to be used productively.

- Mark Walport

An important task for government is to think about the future as well as to learn from the past, and the Foresight Programme, run by the Government Office for Science, helps in the development of this thinking.

- Mark Walport

Climate change is happening, and humans are significant contributors, and that raises some really important policy questions.

- Mark Walport

The principle of treating cancer is to kill the abnormally dividing cells. Many drugs achieve this in a relatively unselective way, killing any cell that is dividing.

- Mark Walport

When governments work well, they safeguard citizens' health, well-being, resilience and security, and they increase prosperity. To do this, they must respond effectively to the new, the unexpected, and the game-changing.

- Mark Walport

One of the biggest costs in the whole scientific publishing world is borne by the academic community, which is the peer review.

- Mark Walport

I look forward to working closely with the Research Councils, Innovate UK, and Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), as we work together to create UKRI. I also look forward to working closely with all of our research and innovation communities to provide a strong and coherent voice for U.K. science and innovation.

- Mark Walport

Scientists have argued that research is good for health, wealth, and society, and the government has trusted them on that.

- Mark Walport

It was and has been one of the major interventions in public health, and it's absolutely vital that people vaccinate their children.

- Mark Walport

As medical data has such power to deliver better understanding of disease and better patient outcomes, it is important we find the best way of sharing it.

- Mark Walport

A small number of people can make a lot of noise.

- Mark Walport

People have extreme beliefs about whether it is right for humans to tamper with embryos in any way at all. Sometimes the values discussion gets conflated with the science discussion. We shouldn't pretend we're having an argument about science when we're having an argument about values.

- Mark Walport

In the case of health information, I spent twenty-five years practicing medicine, and I was all too familiar with the fact that information wasn't properly shared, so I wouldn't know exactly what was in the hospital records; patients would be lost. Computerization gives the opportunity to actually get the information much better.

- Mark Walport

It is important to recognise that, alongside the huge benefits that artificial intelligence offers, there are potential ethical issues associated with some uses.

- Mark Walport

The government is right to recognise the importance of science and technology, but I think it is a mistake to ringfence funds.

- Mark Walport

We do some experiments in humans, some in mice, and there are some questions that can only be answered in nonhuman primates. It's true that you can't immediately say that those experiments will translate into human health, but nevertheless, it is obvious that having an understanding of human memory is going to be important for human health.

- Mark Walport

We owe it to ourselves and to our policy makers to have a high standard of public debate about the future of our energy supplies.

- Mark Walport

Medical engineering is one of the areas in which the traditional 'silo' structures of university disciplines have not encouraged collaboration.

- Mark Walport

I think publishing is a cost of research in the same way as buying a centrifuge is a cost of research.

- Mark Walport

We all want our drugs to be safe - and so an essential part of the pathway to the development of a new drug is approval by a regulator.

- Mark Walport

People go on exploration; they're trying to find places that weren't known before. But it is an inevitable fact of research, as is in any other form of exploration of the unknown, that some people find they go down a dead end.

- Mark Walport

Clearly, climate change is an extremely important threat to us.

- Mark Walport

It seems paradoxical that, as medical scientists make huge advances in discovering the mechanisms of common diseases, fewer and fewer innovative drugs are reaching the market.

- Mark Walport

The most dangerous infections of humans have always been those which have emerged from other species.

- Mark Walport

David Sainsbury has been good for science and good for innovation in the U.K. He has been an outstanding science minister and shown extraordinary passion and commitment to his portfolio.

- Mark Walport

When you check into a hotel, they don't need to know your name and address; they just need to know that the bill will be paid. People should ask questions.

- Mark Walport

We pretend that the debate about genetically modified crops is a debate about science when the reality is, actually, that the science is very clear. It is really a debate about values.

- Mark Walport

It's been an enormous privilege to be the government chief scientific adviser.

- Mark Walport

Science is not finished until it is communicated.

- Mark Walport

We need to show why the government should be funding science and how that funding delivers.

- Mark Walport

It is absolutely key that funding is used to support the best scientists with the best ideas.

- Mark Walport

Research must be central to healthcare if healthcare is to improve.

- Mark Walport

Like Israel, the U.K. is a democracy, and like Israel, we would never want to muzzle political voices, whatever their opinions - and that is especially true for universities.

- Mark Walport

In medicine, there is always a balance between risk and benefit.

- Mark Walport

Science can tell us what can be done in principle, but it is then a matter for public debate as to what should be done. And ultimately, it is a role for politicians to decide the answers.

- Mark Walport

One has to understand the functioning of the normal brain before studying the badly malfunctioning brain.

- Mark Walport

I was always taught at medical school that you should never do a test unless you could do something with the result.

- Mark Walport