Dr. Eric Topol

And you wanted to really emphasize prevention and not just for infectious diseases, but preventing

you know, the critical diseases.

And we talked about that exciting potential, about how we could do such big things on the age-related diseases, cardiovascular, cancer, neurodegenerative.

And, you know, you really got me excited about your vision for the CDC.

And you said, I said, I'd be happy, you know, to help in any way I can as an advisor.

But I said, what?

There's only one concern is that your, you know, higher up who you report to at HHS may not be too enthusiastic about my participation.

But at any rate, it was a call, as I remember it, to be invigorating, you know, exciting.

And that's when you transmitted what I thought, especially considering what you've just been through,

you know, a transformative vision for CDCP.

How do you remember our discussion?

in order to take the position, knowing the kind of adversarial environment you could be dealing with.

And then even during that call,

Susan, you mentioned things are kind of rough here.

I don't know how long I'm going to be here.

We were talking as if things would smooth out and that you would get this kind of space you needed to do what you want to do, which was laudable.

I mean, more than laudable, hyper-innovative.

We even talked about Michael Lewis's book, about how he wrote a book about

You know, the CDC is basically they write reports and observation.

They don't do anything really.