I was talking everywhere, a good friend said, well, President Clinton is quite concerned about bioterrorism and he wants to understand more about this. And I said, okay. And so, he invited me and two other people, maybe a third person, and we went to Washington. And the night before we met with the Cabinet, we were told to keep our talks to five minutes, not a second more.

And we sat there in the State Department room and rehearsed our little five minutes. Josh Lederberg was one of them. Craig Venter was the other. Craig Venter was my friend who told Clinton that I should be invited. And there was a virologist as well. And so there we were, the next morning in the Cabinet, we were sitting on this side of the table and the entire Cabinet was facing us and the president came walking in, and I was the last speaker. And Craig, amazingly and Josh amazingly, were a little cowed. And they were very, very precise. Five minutes, just what they had rehearsed. And I said, no, this is an opportunity. And so, President Clinton said to me, sort of bored, okay, so what should we be worried about by the terrible germs that are going to be designed by bad people? I said, that's not your problem.

And I went completely off script and I thought the guy behind me who was monitoring us was going to have a nervous breakdown. And I said, in fact, nature is a better genetic engineer than any terrorist anywhere. And unless we understand what nature can build, then talking about bioterrorism is vacuous. And he sat up and he said, well, give me an example, what can nature do? I said, it's going to take me more than five minutes. He said, go. I talked for 15 minutes and I gave the Cabinet a lesson in the generation of a pathogen by nature called E. coli 0157, where it came from, what it does, and how we deal with it. And they were asking questions. The president was asking questions every five minutes. And then he said, well, what do we do about this? And what do we do about bioterrorism? I said, it's the same problem. How you respond to a bad pathogen that's been generated by nature is exactly what you're going to do if a bad pathogen is generated in someone's garage in Iran. And so, it was an amazing experience.

Lucy Shapiro (b. 1940, New York City) is a developmental biologist and Professor Emeritus of Developmental Biology at Stanford University where she has been a faculty member since 1989. She held the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Chair in Cancer Research and served as director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine. Dr. Shapiro’s lab has focused on studying Caulobacter crescentus, one of the simplest organisms that divides asymmetrically into different cell types, to uncover fundamental principles of developmental biology.

Dr. Shapiro received her Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Fine Arts from Brooklyn College in 1962, and her Ph.D. In Molecular Biology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1966. In 1986, Shapiro moved to the Columbia University School of Medicine as the first female chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Two years later, in 1989, Shapiro moved to Stanford University and founded the Department of Developmental Biology.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Shapiro became involved in policy work. She was invited to the White House to speak to President Bill Clinton and his Cabinet about the potential threats to the public posed by the increase in antibiotic resistance, emerging infectious diseases, and the possibility of bioterrorism. She then went on to serve as a scientific advisor to the Clinton administration and advisor on bioterrorism to the secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, and to the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice during the George W. Bush administration.

In addition to her research, Dr. Shapiro co-founded the anti-infectives discovery company Anacor Pharmaceuticals to develop new types of antibiotics and antifungals. This has resulted in the production of two FDA approved drugs; Kerydin, a treatment for toenail fungus and Crisaborole, to treat atopic dermatitis. Anacor Pharmaceuticals was acquired by Pfizer in May 2016. She also co-founded Boragen, an agricultural innovation company that merged with AgriMetis to form 5Metis, Inc, where she serves on the board. She also serves on the board of directors at GlaxoSmithKline and Pacific BioSciences, Inc.

Dr. Shapiro has received numerous awards including the National Medal of Science awarded by President Barack Obama, the Linus Pauling Medal, Dickson Prize in Science, Canada Gairdner International Award, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Excellence in Science Award, the Selman Waksman Award, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, the Abbott Lifetime Achievement Award, the John Scott Award, and the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize.