“They are hoping we will all die off so they won’t have to pay us compensation.â€
Peter Fletcher, veteran of Britain’s 1950s nuclear weapons tests, in hospital with cancer (Sunday Mirror, London, 6 October)
“We assume what happened is a very rare circumstance.â€
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Epidemiologist Barna Tugwell of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discussing 40 cases, five of them fatal, in which people received organs tainted with hepatitis C (The New York Times, 4 October)
“All the fancy computerised biometric systems in the world won’t tell you if the person holding the card is a would-be terrorist.â€
Privacy campaigner Lauren Weinstein, on the limitations of high-tech ID cards (Wired News website, 7 October)
“One day we will realise that elephants cannot be reduced to the value of their teeth.â€
Paula Kahumbu of the Kenya Wildlife Service, after 3.6 tonnes of illegal ivory from Kenya was seized in Shanghai (Environment News Service, Washington DC, 1 October)
“We can’t switch it off. It will just keep going.â€
Roy Dennis, Highland Foundation for Wildlife, on the radio tag attached to a honey buzzard that probably died after flying a record 110 hours over the Atlantic (The Guardian, London, 7 October)
“It was brilliant to be able to stand up. It is difficult to get passionate stuck in a wheelchair.â€
Hazel Walker on the benefits of taking cannabis in a clinical trial to relieve the symptoms of multiple sclerosis (The Independent, London, 7 October)