[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[May 30, 2000]
[Pages 1049-1050]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 1049]]


Remarks to the Scientific Community in Lisbon
May 30, 2000

    Good afternoon, Mr. Prime Minister, 
Professor Quintanilha, Minister 
Gago, Dr. Vargas, ladies and gentlemen. I have just had a lot of fun 
touring this science center, but the meaning here of what is being done 
goes beyond the simple joy of learning. From the outermost reaches of 
space to the darkest depths of the ocean, from the mysteries of 
nanotechnology to the miracles of the human genome, men and women are 
gathering knowledge at a faster pace than ever before that will have the 
most profound impacts, especially on the way the young people in this 
audience live.
    Knowledge is being more widely applied and more quickly disseminated 
than ever before, thanks in no small measure to the Internet. And 
therefore, universal education and universal access to technology are 
more important than ever before.
    Today I applaud the scientific work being done in Portugal and the 
efforts of Prime Minister Guterres and 
Minister Gago to train the next generation 
of scientists, engineers, doctors, and astronauts, as well as to close 
the digital divide to make sure all the children of this nation have the 
tools they need to master the information age.
    I am particularly impressed how much scientific research is being 
done in partnership. In my tour of the science center and its exhibits, 
I saw impressive examples of cutting-edge research across national 
boundaries, Portuguese scientists in close cooperation with Americans, 
Europeans, Africans, tackling some of the world's most critical health 
problems.
    In Africa, Asia, and many parts of the world, diseases like AIDS, 
malaria, and tuberculosis are killing not only people but hope for 
progress. In Africa, where 70 percent of all the world's AIDS cases 
exist in sub-Saharan Africa, some countries are hiring two employees for 
every job on the assumption that one of them will die of AIDS.
    In other African countries, 30 percent of the teachers and 40 
percent of the soldiers have the virus; millions suffer from strains of 
malaria that are increasingly resistant to any drug; and a third of the 
world has actually been exposed to tuberculosis. These diseases can ruin 
economies and threaten the very survival of societies.
    I was gratified to meet with some Portuguese scientists working on 
state-of-the-art malaria research, together with the U.S. Public Health 
Service, and to meet some of their students who were learning about it. 
Other Portuguese and American teams are learning together, studying the 
bacteria that cause TB, other new drug-resistant disease threats, and a 
recently discovered pathogen that can strike down those already 
suffering from AIDS.
    I enjoyed meeting with the high school students who were using the 
Internet to study infectious diseases and share information with other 
students all across Europe. This kind of research and learning benefits 
both our nations. It reaches across continents to benefit people who 
really need it, especially in this case, in Africa.
    Our challenge now is also to support prevention programs, to 
accelerate the creation of affordable drugs and vaccines. We have made a 
national commitment to do this in the United States. I've asked Congress 
for over $325 million to increase our international efforts against 
AIDS. I've asked for a billion-dollar tax credit and a global purchase 
fund to speed the development by our pharmaceutical companies of 
vaccines for AIDS, TB, and malaria. We have committed over $70 million 
to fight TB, over $100 million to fight malaria.
    And as the Prime Minister said, today we are announcing a new 
partnership with Portugal and Sao Tome and Principe to study that 
African country's unique malarial epidemic and to develop a strategy to 
end it.
    Tomorrow I am here also to meet with leaders of the European Union, 
and your Prime Minister is the President in 
this period. I hope we'll come out of that meeting with a common 
approach to the global health crisis that will increase scientific 
research, increase the availability of learning opportunities for our 
young people, and most importantly, keep more people alive in the 21st 
century.
    We have got to make sure that today's revolution in science and 
technology serves all humanity, helps us to fight hunger, to mitigate 
natural

[[Page 1050]]

disasters, to reverse the tide of global warming, to grow our economies 
without damaging the environment. This is profoundly important and a 
very great challenge, indeed.
    I couldn't help thinking today that intelligence is equally 
distributed throughout the world, but not all the young people of the 
world have a chance to come together as the Portuguese young people I 
met today do, to study TB, to study malaria. Instead, many of them are 
fighting for their lives because they have it.
    We have a solemn responsibility to take the benefits of the 
information economy, of the explosion in biomedical discoveries, and use 
them to give every young person in the world the chance to live up to 
their God-given potential and to create a safer, better, stronger, more 
prosperous world for us all. That, in the end, is how these discoveries 
should be measured, by whether we did our part to spread them quickly to 
benefit everyone.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 4:56 p.m. at the Pavilion of Knowledge 
Science Center. In his remarks, he referred to Prime Minister Antonio 
Guterres and Minister of Science and Technology Jose Mariano Gago of 
Portugal; Alexandre Quintanilha, professor, University of Porto, who 
introduced the President; and Rosalia Vargas, director, Pavilion of 
Knowledge Science Center. A tape was not available for verification of 
the content of these remarks.