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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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that have been made and will be made will change the average length of life and increase the productivity of this and all other nations able to make use of the information.

Hill urged me to go to see Senator Proxmire to try to interest him in medical research and see if he would refrain from making his usual cutting amendments on the floor this year. I did see him and his wife. His wife is very nice and I thought sympathetic. Proxmire listened to me carefully but his mind was closed to changing his pattern, although he did not say he was going to present amendments. When Hill got to the floor, however, Proxmire did present amendments for one Institute after the other to cut them, and finally in the end Hill was quite desperate and was able to beat down his amendments at the end by only two or three votes, a thing that distressed him very much and Mike Gorman and me as well, as we realized that we did not have the total support of the Senate, as we used to have. Symington, for instance, ran out on us. He said it was because Hill had not voted for the medicare bill, or the medical care for the aged. But I feel the Fountain Committee publicity on some niggling criticism on grants has done some harm. The National Institutes of Health had no public relations people to fight back and are unusually timid about stating the importance of their cause. Also, when we tried to help them there was no one to cooperate with who has any skill or grasp of the public relations problem, so I feel frustrated.





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