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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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various others. Although I had gone to see Senator Bridges and had gotten him to agree that he would support Senator Hill in the Appropriations Committee, with some difficulty Senator Hill had gotten the sum of 835 million dollars passed by the Senate for the NIH appropriations. The House figure was much less.

It took until late in August of '61, after many conferences with the House, for the conferees to agree to 738 million, in other words almost 100 million dollars less than the Senate had voted. Congressman Leonard objected to the earmarking of specific programs, which hurt the Senate report very much. The lack of specific earmarked programs, such as specific funds for research center grants and others, weakened the amount of action that the National Institutes of Health could be forced to take about deficit areas in research.

Q:

They made it all an lump sum then?

Lasker:

Yes, and the lump sum could be spent in any way that the directors of the Institutes felt like. Well, actually, the citizens had testified for substantial sums to establish research centers in cancer and in heart and in mental illness, in neurological diseases, and in blindness and in arthritis. These were earmarked in the Senate report.

Now, actually the Senate report has some moral value in spite of everything, and directional value, but Dr. Shannon, for some reason or other, possibly because he didn't think of





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