Transcript of Noel Fuster's statement at the Salem Conference
(January 13, 1997)

2 NOEL FUSTER: Hello. My name

3 is Noel Fuster.

4 I don't have the knowledge or

5 the know-how to opt really for any good

6 solutions or anything like that, but I can

7 offer one thing, and that's experience. My

8 experience has shown me that a lot of times

9 doctors do have the way of knowing what's

10 wrong. One example, me, they found a virus

11 or some type of sickness, and it could have

12 been any number of things. I could have had

13 a cold, a sore throat, or anything, but

14 within really human error, or I don't know

15 exactly what happened, I was suddenly

16 diagnosed with gonorrhea.

17 I got a multitude of shots. I

18 could go all into that explanation, but it's

19 just I feel if you have a solution,

20 scientists, let's have an answer, but people

21 will end up finding a way to kind of mess

22 that up somehow, you know, and the way, I

23 guess, our emotions carry us or what-not, I

24 think it's really important to try to get the

25 message out to people, and we can find a

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1 way, but even if we had the way of finding

2 out, would we still get the answer out there

3 and would the right things be done?

4 People most of the time do the

5 right things that need to be done, but I'm

6 glad there's so much care and so much, you

7 know, want to do something, and something

8 needs to be done, something needs to be done.


9 THE MODERATOR: Do you have any

10 ideas from all of your experience?

11 MR. FUSTER: My ideas?

12 THE MODERATOR: Yes.

13 MR. FUSTER: No. I'm afraid --

14 I'm only nineteen years old, so I don't think

15 I can come up here and try to be anything I'm

16 not, but I guess the only idea is I felt -- I

17 don't know. You know, I felt during my whole

18 thing with people, sometimes people want to

19 be right so bad that they don't care how they

20 go about it, and they don't care what they

21 do. They have seen the answer; they know

22 what it is; so, they block off everything

23 else. You know, we don't know everything,

24 you know? We don't know everything, so, you

25 know, open-mindedness, that's it. I think if

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1 people were just a little bit more

2 open-minded and kind of let themselves feel

3 things out, then we might get a lot more done

4 by not having so narrow a view.

5 (Applause.)