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in cancer. This Committee on Growth was organized and Rhoads became the first chairman of the committee. About this time Dr. Rhoads sent a questionnaire to all voluntary hospitals, medical schools and organizations which were thought to be interested in cancer research in the United States, and found that only $600,000 was being spent by them in the cancer field, in the whole nation! and that the Federal government was spending only about $500,000, a total before the Cancer Society funds got started of only $1,100,000 in research on the number-two killer of people in the United States--not even the price of a good campaign for Pepsodent Toothpaste.

Actually, I was the one who urged that Rhoads be given the responsibility for organizing the use of the cancer research money because, as I've told you, I was moved by his piece in the New York City Cancer Committee's bulletin in 1943. I asked him to come to see me at 29 Beekman Place in the fall of '43 or '44 while he was still in the army but connected with Memorial Hospital as director-on-leave. In my meeting with him he convinced me that it would be possible to organize to find a cure or cures for cancer, and he was then and was until his death a man of the most vision and resources in his thinking about avenues of approach to the prevention and cure of cancer.

Did he talk in terms of any period of time?

Yes, I think he felt it would take much less time than it has. He died about three years ago, unfortunately.