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Well, Will Clayton had in general great common sense and an interest in health.

Yes, and he had been interested, had he not, in Johns Hopkins?

Well, he was interested in Dr. de Becky's work in Houston.

The committee had a number of other people on it, all intelligent and progressive, and we made a series of recommendations about health insurance and medical research and training, which Mike Gorman brought before the Platform Committee of the Convention in Los Angeles, and they were largely adopted.

It was my idea, which finally got into the platform for 1960, that the President should have a conference on heart and cancer with outstanding experts after he took office in order to encourage research in these major areas which caused two out of three deaths in the United States. This recommendation was included in the platform and in ‘61 Kennedy called the conference, the first and only one in the history of the 1962? presidency, on April 22, 1961. Unfortunately, this was the day of the Bay of Pigs, Cuban disaster, and the President was so occupied that he was unable to see the doctors, the specialists in heart and cancer who had gathered from all parts of the country to make recommendations to him, and the conference was a flow.

I tried several times to get a new appointment set, but so far have been unsuccessful.