Patrick Soon Shiong Quotes
101 Patrick Soon Shiong Quotes
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I don’t know if I get into other people’s heads about what I do.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On his favorite Beatle.] John Lennon.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[In 2010] I’m passionate about innovation.
Patrick Soon Shiong
Innovation is what Los Angeles is all about.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On LA] We need to remind ourselves what is so special about this place that we live in.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[In 2010] The economy is very rough right now, but we have great strengths here. Innovation is a key strength and key to our future competitiveness.
Patrick Soon Shiong
Cultural diversity helps, too. Many of us Angelenos have come here from elsewhere, bringing different mindsets.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On different mindsets] Curiosity, restlessness, an obsession with problem-solving and a good dash of stubbornness.
Patrick Soon Shiong
Disruptive innovation often comes from individuals working outside organizations. I have my own experience of this. I offered my drug discovery to a major pharma company, who thought I was crazy and told me to go away. That turned out to be great for me, because I built my own company to make the drug, and that became a multibillion-dollar enterprise. Other organizations manage to nurture a highly innovative culture within themselves. Northrop Gumman is a good local example of that.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On innovation.] It needs to be nurtured. We can’t just sit back and expect it to happen here because it always have. We need to encourage people to innovate. We need to nurture the culture of innovation.
Patrick Soon Shiong
Innovation is a great Los Angeles tradition, and we must make sure it is the hallmark of our future, too.
Patrick Soon Shiong
There really is hope… a convergence of science and technology.
Patrick Soon Shiong
My father was a village doctor, practicing Chinese herbal medicine. People would come to the house for advice. He’d make up some herbal concoction to give them. I’d watch all that. It was very inspiring and influences what I do today.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[His all white Johannesburg General Hospital in South Africa had never admitted a Chinese student before requiring him to be in the top 4 of 189 in the class in order to graduate (He did.)] I was determined to have my internship at this particular prestigious white hospital because I knew that’s where I’d get the best training and work with the best doctors. [Then having to take a salary half of the white interns.] My peers wanted to go on strike over that, but I said, no, I’d be glad to take the lower salary just so I could learn from the best
Patrick Soon Shiong
We ended up with the safest supply of heparin in the U.S. after the Baxter recall because of the investment we made to make sure our plant in China was safe.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On selling his company APP in July 2008 for $4.6 billion with his 80% stake nettin him $3.7 billion.] I’ve never really focused on the money. I don’t feel any different, except that I have more liquidity to accelerate the things we want to do, with our philanthropy, investing in decreasing disparities in health care and helping to encourage a larger biotech industry here. I don’t anticipate changing my lifestyle. We live a pretty simple, quiet life. We still live in the same house, the kids’ weekly allowances are based on their grades and my daughter baby-sits.
Patrick Soon Shiong
There’s a woman downtown, Sister Rose, who feeds between 200 to 400 people every day without a lot of fanfare. A few years ago I wanted to show my children what she did. She gave us a tour. We come to find out that she has no bank account and was funding the food kitchen from cash donations and selling cardboard boxes for recycling. It was an incredible lesson for my kids to see what she and Father John, her partner, had been able to do with very few resources. We later arranged to get them some equipment and other help, practical things that would not overwhelm them. That was sort of the genesis of how we wanted to approach our giving.
Patrick Soon Shiong
Writing a check can be the easy way, but not always the best way. I had to figure out what could I contribute, hands on, with my life experiences in health care.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On forming a new company of his - Nantworks in September 2011] NantWorks brings together experts from many different scientific backgrounds - mathematicians, advanced network scientists, physicists, software engineers, mechanical engineers, game developers, among others - to create an environment of innovation for solving some of the most challenging problems of our times.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[In September 2011 on Nantworks using a wide range of technologies.] The convergence of all these technologies under one company enables us to bring a true digital revolution to many aspects of people’s lives. This goes way beyond media and entertainment - though we are confident that what we are doing will take the digital aspects of these industries to a new level. It includes areas where advances in technology are most severely needed, such as healthcare and scientific research, education and even within our justice system.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[In January 2013] It took 23 years from Abraxane being conceived to us showing now with conclusiveness that it works in pancreatic cancer. We cannot afford as a society to wait another 23 years to make sure that the patients get the right care, at the right time, at the right place.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[In January 2013] What we discovered, counter-intuitively, is that when you start killing a cancer cell, one of the things it does in order to survive is to spread even further. It causes itself to form new blood vessels. We’ve termed this reactionary angiogenesis.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[In October 2009 on donating $100 million to the St. John’s Health Center] We have the wealthy in Beverly Hills where we can treat them at Cedars-Sinai and UCLA, and 10 miles south you have people who cannot get care, and that's unconscionable. These are the things that make it critical for me to get involved. The underserved deserve care. [On new medical discoveries and technologies.] These technologies should not lie fallow for years without being taken advantage of by patients.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[In November 2009] When Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital closed, it left an already underserved community without access to adequate health care. The prospect of catalyzing the reopening of MLK is wonderfully exciting and consistent with the mission my wife and I set out for our foundation. [He provided the funds to help it re-open.]
Patrick Soon Shiong
I do wear a lot of hats, but the way I define myself internally at least is as a physician.
Patrick Soon Shiong
My parents came from China. I’m Chinese descent. Born a South African. First generation South African. And I actually grew up in… Apartheid.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On the disparity in America of health care being similar to what he saw in Apartheid.] I see the disparity of care from the un-insured and under-insured being no different than what I saw then.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[In June 2010] We have an obligation I believe, to have everybody have really equal access to the highest quality of care. So that’s what drives some of what I do.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On his experience of Apartheid.] It was full segregation and no vote. No ability to own property. Segregated where you could go, where you couldn’t go… That’s the way I grew up. But I also grew up in the black community where they took this burden with such dignity and strength that really formed my upbringing.
Patrick Soon Shiong
I can visualize this conversation of this African woman – black woman, standing up to this big Afrikana man screaming at him and he screaming at her and then with great strength she looked at him and said ‘I’m not under you.’ And that term ‘I’m not under you’ and her ability to stand up with dignity and strength. This white man Afrikana who could ruin her life, put her in jail, do whatever really inspired me.
Patrick Soon Shiong
The idea that I’d be a physician and maybe do something in health came to me quite literally when I was I kid when I was I think thirteen years old.
Patrick Soon Shiong
In South Africa there was a quota on Chinese getting into medical school. So most of the Chinese kids were very bratty to know how compete. I think there were 2 or 3 in the class of 200. And there was just a firm conviction to do well you’d have to do better, and overcome whatever obstacles were around.
Patrick Soon Shiong
My first ward or hospital that I was given was in cancer. And the first patient was an Afrikana who refused to let me examine him. So that was my first experience walking into this hospital and my professor went up to this patient and said ‘If you do not allow this doctor to examine you, you have to then.’ So the patient said ‘fine.’ [Being a fastidious intern] I found that he had an infection in his sinuses. He was so impressed he went around and said… ‘That Chinaman go ahead and make sure he examines you.’ So he became my greatest advocate in this white hospital. I think that was a great lesson for me helping, doing the right thing for the patients will overcome any problem including racism.’
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On Abraxane] I had one of these ‘Oh my God moments’ [when I realised that] tumor cells needed healthy algemum to feed. And that could be for all cancers - a simple truth is you feed or you die. So if I could take this algemum and make another particle ie a particle 1/180 the size of a single red blood cell I could definitely inject it and allow the tumors to feed and die. If I put inside the nanoparticle a drug. So I am basically feeding it blood, but tricking it with ratpoison.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On taking his idea for Abraxane to a major pharmaceutical company and being rejected. Forming the impetuous to form his first company.] I was told ‘No.’ And it was left that then the only person that was left was to do it myself. So we were in the ‘just do it’ mode. I suppose. [Now Abraxane is a very successful drug.]
Patrick Soon Shiong
Whatever I can do, I’d be happy to help.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On helping people with the products that he or his companies have developed. Like one mother of two children who had pancreatic cancer was helped with Abraxane.] That’s what it’s all about. It’s wonderful.
Patrick Soon Shiong
The science of healthcare is very complex. In my mind you need to look at healthcare in it’s three buckets. So on the one hand you have this one area that we call knowledge that is being driven, the other hand you have this area of the patient care of delivery, and the third hand you have this area of payment or reimbursement. The problem is that there is these little blockages in between each area of these.
Patrick Soon Shiong
[On being invited by one of his children’s teacher to give a lecture at their class.] How am I going to give this lecture to on ‘health care reform’ eight graders? And it was the greatest opportunity because, if I could explain it to the eight graders, maybe I could explain it to Washington.
Patrick Soon Shiong
I think we can actually change the way we treat patients in healthcare.
Patrick Soon Shiong
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