    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [January 21, 2000]
    [Pages 94-101]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
    California
    January 21, 2000

        Thank you so much. Dr. Moore, President
    Baltimore; to the faculty and students at
    Caltech, and to people involved in NASA's JPL out here. I want to thank
    Representatives Dreier, Baca, and Millender-McDonald for coming with me today and for the work they do in
    your behalf back in Washington. I want to thank three members of our
    Science and Technology team for being here: my Science Adviser, Neal
    Lane; Dr. Rita Colwell, the NSF Director; and my good friend, the Secretary of
    Energy, Bill Richardson, who has done a
    great job with our national labs to keep them being innovators in fields
    from computational science to environmental technology.
        One person who would have liked to have
    been here today, and I can tell you thinks that he would be a better
    representative of our administration on this topic, is the Vice
    President. When we took office together, the fact that I was challenged
    scientifically and technologically was a standing joke. [Laughter] And
    he wants all of you to know that he's campaigning all over the country
    with a Palm 7 on his hip. [Laughter]
        He wants you to know that he loves
    science and technology so much, he's not even angry that Caltech beat
    out Harvard for top spot in the U.S. News rankings this year. [Laughter]
    I think it has something to do with the relative electoral votes of
    California and Massachusetts. [Laughter]
        But before I came out here, I told Dr. Moore and Dr. Baltimore that it
    was a real thrill for me to meet Dr. Moore, that even I knew what
    Moore's law was, and that before the Vice President became otherwise occupied, we used to have weekly
    lunches, and I'd talk to him about politics, and he'd give me lectures
    about climate change. [Laughter] But we once got into this hilarious
    conversation about the practical applications of Moore's law, like it
    explains why every cable network can double the number of talk shows
    every year that no one wants to listen to. [Laughter] And so it's a real
    thrill for me to be here. [Laughter]
        Actually, I come with some trepidation. An 8-year-old child met me
    at the airport, and she and her brother came with their father, who is a
    friend of mine, and she brought me a letter from her third grade class.
    And the letter had

    [[Page 95]]

    all these questions: What was your favorite book when you were in the
    third grade? What did you collect then? What do you collect now? And one
    of the questions was, are you ever nervous when you're speaking before
    large audiences? And the answer--and I was writing all these answers so
    we could type up a letter--I said, ``Not usually.'' But I mean, I'm sort
    of nervous here today. [Laughter]
        And I told somebody I was nervous, one of the wags back at the White
    House with a sense of humor, and he said, ``Well, you know the Einstein
    millennial story, don't you,'' trying to help me get unnervous. I said--
    [laughter]--so I said, ``No.'' You always learn to be patient in the
    face of other people's jokes. It's one of the great social skills that
    an American can develop. [Laughter]
        So I said, ``No.'' And he said, ``Well, God decides to give America
    a millennial gift, and the gift is to send Einstein back to Earth for a
    few days to talk to ordinary folks, because he was the greatest brain of
    the last millennium. And they have the first meeting in a nice little
    hall like this. And it's absolutely packed, and these three big, burly
    guys push their way to the front, shoving everyone else to the side. So
    Einstein politely takes them first, and he says to the first guy, `Well,
    what's your IQ, young man?' And he said, `240.' He said, `Wonderful,
    let's talk about how I thought up the theory of relativity.' And they
    have a terrific conversation. The second guy, he says, `What's your IQ?'
    He said, `140.' He said, ``Let's talk about globalization and its impact
    on climate change.' And they had a terrific conversation. And the third
    guy kind of hung his head, and he said, `What's your IQ?' And he said,
    `40.' And Einstein said, `Oh, don't worry. You can always go into
    politics.''' [Laughter]
        I want you to know, though, in preparation for this day I've been
    spending a lot of time trying to get in touch with my inner nerd.
    [Laughter] And my wife helped me,
    because she's been having these Millennium Lectures at the White House
    to discuss big things. And the other night, she had Vint Cerf, who was one of the founders of the Internet, and
    Eric Lander, who's helped to develop many of the
    tools of modern genome research. And that really got me thinking, and I
    want to say some more serious things about that in a moment. And then my
    staff challenged me to actually order Christmas gifts over the Internet.
    And I did that. And while doing that, I learned that with just a click
    of a mouse, I could actually order--and I did this, I'm embarrassed to
    say--I ordered Arkansas smoked ham and sausage delivered to my door.
    [Laughter] So I think the 21st century has more for me than I had
    originally thought. [Laughter]
        As all of you know, Albert Einstein spent a lot of time here at
    Caltech in the 1930's. And 3 weeks ago, Time magazine crowned him the
    Person of the Century. The fact that he won this honor over people like
    Franklin Roosevelt and Mohandas Gandhi is not only an incredible
    testament to the quantum leaps in knowledge that he achieved for all
    humanity but also for the 20th century's earth-shaking advances in
    science and technology.
        Just as an aside, I'd like to say because we're here at Caltech,
    Einstein's contributions remind us of how greatly American science and
    technology and, therefore, American society have benefited and continue
    to benefit from the extraordinary gifts of scientists and engineers who
    are born in other countries, and we should continue to welcome them to
    our shores.
        But the reason so many of you live, work, and study here is that
    there are so many more questions yet to be answered: How does the brain
    actually produce the phenomenon of consciousness? How do we translate
    insights from neuroscience into more productive learning environments
    for all our children? Why do we age--the question that I ponder more and
    more these days. [Laughter] I looked at a picture of myself when I was
    inaugurated the first time the other day, and it scared me to death.
    [Laughter] And so I wonder, is this preprogrammed, or wear and tear? Are
    we alone in the universe? What causes gamma ray bursts? What makes up
    the missing mass of the universe? What's in those black holes, anyway?
    And maybe the biggest question of all: How in the wide world can you add
    $3 billion in market capitalization simply by adding ``.com'' to the end
    of a name? [Laughter]
        You will find the answers to the serious questions I posed and to
    many others. It was this brilliant Caltech community that first located
    genes on chromosomes and unlocked the secrets of chemical bonds and
    quarks. You were the propulsive force behind jet flight and built
    America's first satellites. You made it possible for us to manufacture
    microchips of ever-increasing complexity and gave us our first guided

    [[Page 96]]

    tour on the surface of Mars. With your new gravitational wave
    observatory, you will open an entirely new window on the mysteries of
    the universe, observing the propagating ripples which Einstein predicted
    84 years ago.
        Today I came here to thank you for all you're doing to advance the
    march of human knowledge and to announce what we intend to do to
    accelerate that march by greatly increasing our national investments in
    science and technology.
        The budget I will submit to Congress in just a few days will include
    a $2.8 billion increase in our 21st century research fund. This will
    support a $1 billion increase in biomedical research for the National
    Institutes of Health; $675 million, which is double the previous largest
    dollar increase for the National Science Foundation in its entire 50-
    year history; and major funding increases in areas from information
    technology to space exploration to the development of cleaner sources of
    energy.
        This budget makes research at our Nation's universities a top
    priority, with an increase in funding of more than $1 billion.
    University-based research provides the kind of fundamental insights that
    are most important in any new technology or treatment. It helps to
    produce the next generation of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs. And
    we intend to give university based research a major lift.
        The budget supports increases not only in biomedical research but
    also in all scientific and engineering fields. As you know, advances in
    one field are often dependent on breakthroughs in other disciplines. For
    example, advances in computer science are helping us to develop drugs
    more rapidly and to move from sequencing the human genome to better
    understanding the functions of individual genes.
        My budget supports a major new national nanotechnology initiative
    worth $500 million. Caltech is no stranger to the idea of
    nanotechnology, the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic and
    molecular level. Over 40 years ago, Caltech's own Richard Symonds asked,
    ``What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we
    want them?'' Well, you can see one example of this in this sign behind
    me, that Dr. Lane furnished for Caltech to hang as
    the backdrop for this speech. It's the Western hemisphere in gold atoms.
    But I think you will find more enduring uses for nanotechnology.
        Just imagine, materials with 10 times the strength of steel and only
    a fraction of the weight; shrinking all the information at the Library
    of Congress into a device the size of a sugar cube; detecting cancerous
    tumors that are only a few cells in size. Some of these research goals
    will take 20 or more years to achieve. But that is why--precisely why--
    as Dr. Baltimore said, there is such a critical role for the Federal
    Government.
        As I announced yesterday, this budget also includes an historic
    initiative to make higher education more affordable. I am well aware of
    the fact that I would not have become President of the United State
    without loans and grants and jobs that helped me get through college and
    law school, and that more and more, given the cost of higher education,
    a higher and higher percentage of our students need more of all those
    things. This has been a virtual obsession for me ever since I became
    President. I was determined to leave office saying we had opened the
    doors of college to all Americans.
        We have come a long way, by changing the student loan program to
    make it less expensive and to give young people more options for paying
    off their loans, including as a percentage of their income when they
    leave school. We've increased the number of work-study grants from
    $700,000 to $1 million. We've dramatically increased the Pell Grant
    program. And the HOPE scholarship tax credit and the lifetime learning
    tax credits we adopted in 1997 last year alone had almost 5 million
    beneficiaries in institutions of higher education in the United States.
        Yesterday I proposed that, for the first time, we make college
    tuition tax deductible and that we do it in a way that would benefit
    even more people on more modest incomes so that they could get the same
    28 percent benefit even if they're in the 15 percent tax category. I
    think this is very important.
        The budget contains another increase in Pell grants, special
    initiatives to help minority students get into science and engineering
    and graduate, special efforts--that is, basically a test program for
    several thousand students now--to try to do something about the
    extraordinarily high dropout rate from college.
        Now, over two-thirds of the high school graduates are actually going
    to go into college this year. That's an increase of over 10 percent in
    the last 7 years. That's quite a large increase

    [[Page 97]]

    in a short time. But the dropout rate has increased correspondingly. We
    want to know why. Is it for financial reasons? Is it because people
    weren't prepared? Could they all be just idiosyncratic personal reasons?
    And we intend to do everything we can with a very large test group to
    see what we can do to turn this situation around.
        And finally, we're going to double the size of our GEAR UP program
    to 1.4 million young people. That's the program where people in
    universities and college all across America mentor middle-school kids
    who are at risk to try to help them develop the skills and the belief
    that they can go to college and simultaneously to tell them and their
    parents exactly what they can expect in the way of aid under current law
    if they do go, so they will know. Many people still don't know that the
    barriers to their going on to college have been removed. So I hope you
    will also support this part of our budget, because the young people of
    our country and their families need it.
        In addition to announcing our new research budget and our efforts to
    make colleges more affordable, I'd like to try to achieve one other
    mission here today. First, I want to take a step back to acknowledge
    that we have not done a good enough job in helping all Americans to
    understand why we need very, very large investments in science and
    technology.
        Far too many of our citizens think science is something done by men
    and women who are in white lab coats behind closed doors that somehow
    leads to satellite TV and Dolly the sheep, and it's all a mystery. It is
    our responsibility to open the world of science to more of our fellow
    citizens, to help them understand the great questions science is seeking
    to answer, and to help them see how those answers will actually affect
    their lives and their children's lives in profoundly important and
    positive ways.
        First, we have to make sure Americans understand the contributions
    science and technology are making right now to the present level of
    economic growth, something Dr. Baltimore referred to. For example,
    because of our early investments in the Internet, America now leads the
    world in information technology, an industry that now accounts for a
    third of our economic growth although only 8 percent of our work force,
    that generates jobs that pay 80 percent more than the private sector
    average.
        If you look at that, what does that mean to ordinary people, and
    what does it mean to the nature of the economy we're living in? I have
    never told the American people that we had repealed the ordinary laws of
    supply and demand or the business cycle. But we have stretched them
    quite a lot.
        In February, next month, we will have the longest economic expansion
    in the history of the United States, outstripping even those that
    required full mobilization for war. Now, part of that is because we have
    pursued, I believe, sound policies: to get rid of the deficit; to start
    running surpluses, the first back-to-back surpluses in 42 years; to keep
    our markets open, with 270 trade agreements; to argue, as I have, that
    not only exports are benefited by open markets, we also benefit from the
    imports, because they're a powerful brake on inflation and allow us to
    continue to grow.
        But the real reason this thing keeps going on and on and on is
    that--all we did in the Government was to set the conditions and provide
    the tools for the American people to succeed. The real reason is the
    exponential growth in information technology and how it is rifling
    through every other sector of our economy and reinforcing the material
    science revolution, which proceeded it by a few years but which
    continues to the present day.
        When I became President, there were only 50 sites on the World Wide
    Web--50. When I became President--that seems like a long time ago to the
    students, but the rest of you will know--[laughter]--it's just like
    yesterday. There are now over 50 million. Think of it. In 7 years, from
    50 to over 50 million. It is changing everything about the way we work
    and live and relate to each other.
        I was in Northern California a few weeks ago with a lot of really
    fascinating young people who work with eBay. A lot of you have probably
    bought things, maybe you've even sold things on eBay. But for example,
    one of the things I learned is that in addition to the employees of
    eBay, there are now 20,000 people whose primary source of income is
    buying and selling on eBay. They do it for a living. And several of
    them, not an insubstantial number of them, were on welfare before they
    found a way to bring their entrepreneurial skills to bear by trading on
    eBay. It has changed everything.
        So we have to say to people, if you like the fact that we have the
    lowest unemployment and

    [[Page 98]]

    welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest minority unemployment rates ever
    recorded, the lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years, the lowest
    poverty rates in 20 years, the lowest single-household poverty rate in
    46 years, you have to understand that all that, at least in large part,
    is because of the ability of the discoveries of science and technology
    to rifle through our ordinary lives. And it is very, very important that
    all of us do a better job of that.
        I have proposed in this budget a 36 percent increase in information
    technology research alone, so that researchers will be able to tackle a
    wide array of other challenges. How do we find, precisely, the piece of
    information we're looking for in an ever-larger ocean of raw data? How
    do we design computers that are usable by everyone including people with
    disabilities?
        One of the most fascinating relationships I've developed--we were
    talking on the plane ride out here about one of the great things about
    being President is nearly any-body will come to talk to you--once,
    anyway. [Laughter] And we were talking about all the people I had been
    privileged to meet in the last 7 years. You know, I have developed quite
    a good personal friendship with Stephen Hawking, who, as all of you know, has lived longer with Lou
    Gehrig's disease, as far as we know, than any person who's ever lived--
    partly, I am convinced, because of not only the size of his brain but
    the size of his heart.
        But it is fascinating to see what technology has permitted this man
    to do. Just a few years ago, he could
    have had the biggest brain in the world and no one could have known it
    because it could not have gotten out. He has no speaking capacity,
    almost no movement left. He can just move his thumb and hold in his hand
    this remarkable little tracer that goes through a whole dictionary of
    words that he has, that he runs through with rapid speed. He picks the
    word he wants, puts the sentences together, and then an automated voice
    tells you what he just said.
        How can we make it even easier for him? How can we make it even easier for other people? This will
    be a huge issue. Make no mistake about it, the liberation of Americans
    with disabilities is also in no small measure the product of the
    revolution in science and technology.
        There are also other uses. I read the other day that manufacturers
    are soon going to introduce a refrigerator that can scan the bar codes
    of empty packages and expired goods--[laughter]--and order new groceries
    for you over the Internet. [Laughter] Now, everybody who's ever poured
    out a carton of bad milk will love this. [Laughter] You don't have to
    smell your bad milk anymore. It won't be long before the computer will
    refuse to order what's bad for you--[laughter]--and only pick items off
    Dean Ornish's diet. And then we'll all be in
    great shape. [Laughter]
        The second thing I think we have to do is, let Americans know how
    investments in science and technology, broadly stated, will allow us to
    lead longer, healthier lives. Everybody knows now that you can put money
    into cancer research--and thank God we've discovered two of the genes
    that are high predictors of breast cancer, for example, in the last
    couple of years--but we need for more Americans to understand why we
    need a broad research agenda in science and technology, for the health
    of Americans.
        In the 20th century, American life expectancy went from 47 years to
    almost 77 years, thanks to penicillin and the development of vaccines
    for many childhood diseases. We were talking the other day about the
    impact--I'm old enough to remember the first polio vaccine. And I
    remember how our mothers herded us in line and made us stand there
    waiting for our shot. And it was like they were all holding their
    breath, praying and hoping that we would get our shot before we got
    polio. It's something that young people today can hardly imagine, but it
    hung like a cloud over the families of my parents' generation. Now, we
    have this incredible life expectancy. Today, the average American who
    lives to be 65 has a life expectancy of 83--already. And we are clearly
    on the cusp of greater advances.
        Later this year, researchers expect to finish the first complete
    sequencing of the genome--all 3 billion letters and 80,000 genes that
    make up our DNA code. Since so many diseases have a genetic component,
    the completion of this project will clearly lead to a revolution in our
    ability to detect, treat, and prevent many diseases. For example,
    patients with some forms of leukemia and breast cancer soon may receive
    sophisticated new drugs that elegantly actually target the precise
    cancer cells with little or no risk to healthy cells. That will change
    everything.
        Our new trove of genomic data may even allow us to identify and cure
    most genetic diseases before a child is even born. Most people

    [[Page 99]]

    just take it as a given now that within the next few years, when young
    mothers bring their babies home from the hospital, they will bring along
    a genetic map of their children's makeup, what the problems are, what
    the challenges are, what the strengths are. It will be scary to some
    extent, but it also plainly will allow us to raise our children in a way
    that will enhance the length and quality of their lives.
        But it's important to recognize that we never could have had the
    revolution in the genome project without the revolution in computer
    science as well, that they intersected. Research at the intersection
    between biomedical research and engineering will also lead to amazing
    breakthroughs. Already, scientists are working on--we've seen it on
    television now--an artificial retina to treat certain kinds of blindness
    and methods of directly stimulating the spinal cord to allow people who
    are paralyzed to walk. Now, you think of that.
        Last year, for the first time, to give you an idea of the impact of
    technology on traditional medical research, last year, for the first
    time, medical researchers transplanted nerves from the limbs to the
    spine of a laboratory animal that had its spine severed and achieved
    movement in the lower limbs for the first time. That had never happened
    before.
        Now, because of advances in the intersection between science and
    engineering, we may not have to keep working on that. We may actually be
    able to program a chip that will stimulate the exact movements that were
    prevented by the severing or the injuring of a spine. And all the people
    that we have seen hobbled by these terrible injuries might be able to
    get up and walk. Because there was medical research, yes, but there was
    also research on the engineering, nonbiological components of this
    endeavor. We have to do a better job of explaining that to the American
    people.
        Third, advances in science and technology are helping us to preserve
    our environment in ways that preserve more sustainable and more
    widespread economic growth. And that is very important.
        Let me just give you an example. Not far from here in Southern
    California, a couple years ago the Department of Energy, working with
    the National Home Builders and HUD, helped to construct a moderate and
    low income housing community with glass in the windows that keeps out 4
    or 5 times as much heat or cold and lets in even more light. And that,
    coupled with the latest insulation technology and the latest lighting in
    the house, enabled the houses to be marketed to people of modest
    incomes, with the promise that their electric bills would average 40
    percent below what they would in a home of that size built in the
    traditional manner. I can tell you that after 2 years, the power bills
    are averaging 65 percent less. And we can't build enough houses for the
    people that want them.
        The Detroit auto show this year is showcasing cars that, I'm proud
    to say, were developed as part of our partnership for new generation
    vehicles that the Vice President headed up,
    and we started way back in '93. We brought in the auto workers and the
    auto companies and we said, ``Look, instead of having a big fight about
    this, why don't we work together and figure out how to use technology to
    dramatically increase mileage.'' And a lot of you are probably
    familiar--they're using fuel-injection engines, which cuts a lot of the
    greenhouse gas emissions; some using developed mixed-fuel cars that
    start on electricity, switch to fuel after you reach a certain stage,
    and then go back to electricity when you slow down back to that speed,
    because 70 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions are used in starting
    and stopping cars.
        And there are all kinds of other things being developed. But this
    year the Detroit auto show has cars making 70, 80 miles a gallon, that
    are four-seater cars, that will be on the market in a couple of years.
    You can buy Japanese cars this year on the market that get about 70
    miles to the gallon, but they're small two-seaters. Last year I went and
    saw cars that are 500 to 1,000 pounds lighter than traditional cars and
    score at least as well on all the damage tests, again because of the
    revolution in material science, with composite materials being used in
    the cars.
        And the big thing that's coming up in this area is, before you know
    it, I believe we will crack the chemical barriers to truly efficient
    production of biomass fuels. One of the reasons you see this whole
    debate--in the Presidential campaign, if you're following it, you know
    the big argument is, is it a waste of money to push ethanol or not, if
    it takes seven gallons of gasoline to make eight gallons of ethanol. But
    they're on the verge of a chemical breakthrough that is analogous to
    what was done when crude oil could be transferred efficiently into
    gasoline. And when that happens, you'll be able to make

    [[Page 100]]

    eight gallons of biomass, not just from corn, but from weeds, from rice
    hulls, from anything, for about one gallon of fuel. That will be the
    equivalent therefore, in environmental terms, of cars that get hundreds
    of miles a gallon. And the world, the environmental world, will be
    changed forever. And that's--one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions
    are in transportation.
        Now, I just want to kind of go off the script a little to hammer
    this home, because big ideas in science matter. And once you make a big
    breakthrough, then thousands and thousands of things follow that have
    immense practical significance. But you must also know and believe that
    being in the grip of a big idea that is wrong can be absolutely
    disastrous.
        So today, in Washington and in much of the world, there is a debate
    that goes something like this: The overwhelming evidence of science is
    that the climate is warming at an unsustainable rate due to human
    activity. And then there's this old idea which says, ``Well, that's
    really too bad, but a country can't grow rich or stay rich and sustain a
    middle-class lifestyle unless every year it puts more greenhouse gases
    into the atmosphere than it did the year before. And you certainly can't
    drastically cut them and maintain your level of wealth.''
        Our administration spent hundreds of thousands of dollars last year
    complying with requests to appear before a House subcommittee that
    believes that our passion about climate change is some sort of
    subversive plot to wreck the American economy. [Laughter] Either that
    or--you know, I've been reading too many kooky books or something.
    [Laughter] They think it's just crazy. Why? Because they can't face the
    fact that we would do anything to hurt the American economy, and they
    really believed it would. So I would argue to you that here is a place
    where we're in the grip of an idea that is wrong.
        Our efforts to get India and China and other big countries that will
    soon surpass us in greenhouse gas emissions to cooperate with us, not in
    regulation but in new technologies to help them grow rich differently,
    always keep running up against the barrier of suspicious officials who
    believe somehow this is kind of an American plot to keep them poor. Why?
    Because they're in the grip of an idea that isn't right anymore. It is
    simply not true that to grow rich, you have to put more greenhouse gases
    in the atmosphere.
        So again, I say we have to do a better job of explaining the
    contribution that science and technology can make to saving the planet
    and allowing us to still have prosperous lives and, I would argue, to
    allow us to have more prosperous lives and better lives that would
    otherwise be the case, certainly within 40 to 50 years, if we don't act
    and act now. This is profoundly important.
        Finally, I think we have to do a better job of having an open debate
    about the responsibilities that all these advances and discoveries will
    clearly impose: The same genetic revolution that can offer new hope for
    millions of Americans could also be used to deny people health
    insurance; cloning human beings; information technology which helps to
    educate children and provide telemedicine to rural communities could
    also be used to create disturbingly detailed profiles of every move our
    citizens make on line.
        The Federal Government, I think, has a role to play in meeting these
    challenges as well. That's why we've put forward strict rules and
    penalties to limit the use and release of medical records; why we've
    worked with Congress to ban the cloning of human beings, while
    preserving our ability to use the morally and medically acceptable
    applications of cloning technology, which I believe are profoundly
    important; why we're working with the Internet industry to ensure that
    consumers--consumers--have control over how their personal information
    is used.
        It's up to all of us to figure out how to use the new powers that
    science and technology give us in a responsible way. Just because we can
    do something doesn't mean we should. It is incumbent, therefore, upon
    both scientists and public servants to involve the public in a great
    debate to ensure that science serves humanity--always--and never the
    other way around.
        On this campus nearly 70 years ago, Albert Einstein said, ``Never
    forget this, in the midst of your diagrams and equations: concern for
    man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all
    technical endeavors.'' Today, at the dawn of this new millennium, we see
    for all of you, particularly the young people in this audience, an era
    of unparalleled promise and possibility. Our relentless quest to
    understand what we do not yet know, which has defined Americans from our
    beginnings, will have more advances in the 21st century than at any

    [[Page 101]]

    other time in history. We must be wise as we advance.
        I told you earlier that the First Lady sponsored a Millennium Evening with Vint Cerf and Professor Lander. One
    of the most interesting things he said about his genomic research
    confirmed not other scientific research but the teachings of almost
    every religion in the world. He said that, genetically, we are 99.9
    percent the same. And he said, furthermore, that the genetic differences
    among individuals within a given racial or ethnic group are greater than
    the differences between groups as a whole, suggesting that we are not
    only our brothers' and sisters' keepers but, in fundamental genetic
    ways, we are our brothers and sisters.
        And I leave you with this thought. I think the supreme irony of our
    time is that I can come here as President and have the high honor of
    discussing these unfathomable advances wrought by the human intellect
    that have occurred, and the even greater ones yet to occur, in a world
    where the biggest social problem is the oldest demon of human society:
    We are still afraid of people who aren't like us. And fear leads to
    distrust, and distrust leads to dehumanization, and dehumanization leads
    to violence.
        And it is really quite interesting that the end of the cold war has
    marked an upsurge in ethnic and racial and tribal and religious hatred
    and conflict around the world and that even in our own country we see
    countless examples of hate crimes from people who believe that others
    are different and, therefore, to be distrusted and feared and
    dehumanized.
        You have the power to put science and technology at work advancing
    the human condition as never before. Always remember to keep your values
    at the core of what you do. And tell every one of your fellow citizens,
    and indeed, people with whom you come in contact all across the world,
    that every single scientific advance confirms over and over again the
    most important facts of life, our common humanity.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 11 a.m. at Beckman Auditorium. In his
    remarks, he referred to Gordon Moore, chair, board of trustees, and
    David Baltimore, president, California Institute of Technology; Vinton
    G. Cerf, senior vice president of Internet architecture and technology,
    MCI WorldCom; Eric Lander, director, Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome
    Research; physicist Stephen W. Hawking; and Dean Ornish, founder,
    Preventive Medicine Research Institute, and author of several health and
    diet books. The President also referred to JPL, the National Aeronautics
    and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.