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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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annoying to find that there's a lot of research work going on that leads to doctors having to learn new techniques and new methods of treating illness. Now, this sound very cynical on my part but it really is true. Also, the drug industry isn't crazy about a lot of research on the outside because this may lead to the obsolescence of their patents and the need to do more research themselves to keep abreast of what's going on in the universities, to keep ahead of their competitors who may get things from people who have made discoveries in universities, In other words, there are people who don't want to see the prime of life prolonged too fast or at all and are really not very humanitarian in their point of view and also not very big about how much they think human life is worth, except possibly their own. I don't know if their views about their own value is as small as the value they place on others. But there is a terrible, intense conservatism among many doctors, even about finding new ways to cure people or treat them.

Q:

And is it not true also that in the attempt to speed up these efforts....

Lasker:

Meets with resistance so that you can't be sure whether it's better to talk about your efforts or just to talk about them with people who make the decisions and not with anybody else. That's what we've done largely up till now. We really have found that you could raise almost as much trouble--well, that you could arouse dangerous trouble if people know that there's any real





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