Michael Specter

There are always potential side effects for every vaccine.

— Michael Specter

Until the Nineteen-Eighties, when Deng Xiaoping designated the area as China's first special economic zone, Shenzhen had been a tiny fishing village.…

— Michael Specter

There are people who could watch a hurricane like Sandy blow out of the Atlantic every other day and blame it on…

— Michael Specter

We're lying ourselves into believing things are untrue, like organic food will solve all our problems, or vitamins will make us healthy,…

— Michael Specter

I started to write about science and medicine at the 'Washington Post,' in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

— Michael Specter

Clearly, some of the reason people embrace alternatives and reject vaccines is that they are angry and mistrustful of government and of…

— Michael Specter

The numbers matter: underreporting of Lyme disease obscures the true burden of the illnesses, on individuals as well as on health-care systems.…

— Michael Specter

There is a major problem with reliance on placebos, like most vitamins and antioxidants. Everyone gets upset about Big Science, Big Pharma,…

— Michael Specter

Denialist arguments are often bolstered by accurate information taken wildly out of context, wielded selectively, and supported by fake experts who often…

— Michael Specter

Your dollar cheeseburger isn't a dollar if you factor in what it's going to cost in health care.

— Michael Specter

To suggest that organic vegetables, which cost far more than conventional produce, can feed billions of people in parts of the world…

— Michael Specter

The history of agriculture is the history of humans breeding seeds and animals to produce traits we want in our crops and…

— Michael Specter

With a hundred and seventy-eight machines to sequence the precise order of the billions of chemicals within a molecule of DNA, B.G.I.…

— Michael Specter

Be sceptical, ask questions, demand proof. Demand evidence. Don't take anything for granted. But here's the thing: When you get proof, you…

— Michael Specter

Nobody celebrates when they avoid an illness they never expected to get.

— Michael Specter

When people say they prefer organic food, what they often seem to mean is they don't want their food tainted with pesticides…

— Michael Specter

Vaccination is a public health issue because influenza is a highly contagious disease. If you don't vaccinate your child, his or her…

— Michael Specter

I think it is true that you can eat extremely healthy food at McDonald's, and you can eat amazingly badly at Chipotle.

— Michael Specter

I moved from Moscow to Rome with my family and two bicycles in 1998, and spent a lot of that year- and…

— Michael Specter

Flu is easily transmitted, so if you are working with sick people - who are most at risk for getting seriously ill…

— Michael Specter

If left untreated, Lyme disease can be crippling, yet it is a difficult illness to contract: a tick needs to attach itself…

— Michael Specter

I have never earned one penny from any pharmaceutical company. I will never accept one penny from them either. Ever.

— Michael Specter

Most reputable scientists agree that climate change is real and that the effects are likely to be bad. But nobody can say…

— Michael Specter

All the food we eat - every grain of rice and kernel of corn - has been genetically modified. None of it…

— Michael Specter

Any group that intends to sell laboratory meat will need to build bioreactors - factories that can grow cells under pristine conditions.…

— Michael Specter