[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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.