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the payoffs are in human beings, as of this moment, unfortunately.
Wouldn't it be a feasible thing to have some sort of coordination between all these efforts in this area?
Well, they're informally in touch with each other, and the Veterans Administration has a representative on all the councils of the National Institutes of Health, but there's no real dynamic interchange of efforts, I couldn't say, on many fronts. Maybe there are. The only exception I know of that is in the cancer field under Dr. Lyndon Lee. The National Cancer Institute gives the Veterans Administration funds of about half a million dollars with which to test new drugs on different forms of cancer in Veterans Hospitals cancer patients. But the Veterans Administration is a monolithic organization that is very much all in a world of its own, and any of the lines that get crossed get crossed informally, usually.
It would be an idea though, wouldn't it?
It would be, certainly; it would be superb. And if the personalities of the leaders were different, it would be done and could be done.
Probably under the aegis of the Cabinet officer.
Well, no Secretary of HEW has really been interested in medical research, really interested in medical research, or known
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