Stephen Hawking Talks Health Care, ALS, and Life

When you can only speak by twitching your cheek toward words flitting past your screen, you don’t tend to do a lot of interviews. But Stephen Hawking sat down with the New York Times last month to talk about his life, aliens, and health care. Some highlights:

• On aliens: Contacting aliens is asking for trouble; they might be so advanced “that our civilization might not survive the experience.” But if they make first contact, it’s a different story. “I have no doubt that if we are ever contacted by such beings, we would want to respond.”

• On people who say he’s doing too well to really have ALS: “Maybe I don’t have the most common kind of motor neuron disease, which usually kills in two or three years. It has certainly helped that I have a job and that I have been looked after so well.”
• On living with ALS: “My advice to disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with.”
• On health care reform: Hawking jumped into the debate in 2009 after an Investors Business Daily editorial said Britain’s system would have killed Hawking. “I felt compelled to make a statement to explain the error. I am British … and the National Health Service has taken great care of me,” he says. “I believe in universal health care. I am not afraid to say so.”

(More Stephen Hawking stories.)