Everyone's got an intuition about the risk of everyday life. We thought, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could quantify it?' And once you begin to do that, you realize that everyday life is not benign.

The assumption should be that we will not appear in print or the blogosphere. Having dinner should not be fodder for Facebook. And this is just as true for 'public personalities' as it is for the average person. After all, even people in the public eye have a right to a private life.

Vaccines are the most cost-effective health care interventions there are. A dollar spent on a childhood vaccination not only helps save a life, but greatly reduces spending on future healthcare.

The death of a 20-year-old woman is intuitively worse than that of a 2-month-old girl, even though the baby has had less life. The 20-year-old has a much more developed personality than the infant, and has drawn upon the investment of others to begin as-yet-unfulfilled projects.

My father always has been attractive because of his energy, warmth, charm, and talent for finding some connection with people from all cultures and walks of life. He rarely observed social formalities and niceties - something he has passed on to his boys.

Reasoning based on cost has been strenuously resisted; it violated the Hippocratic Oath, was associated with rationing, and derided as putting a price on life... Indeed, many physicians were willing to lie to get patients what they needed from insurance companies that were trying to hold down costs.