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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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anything about it. It could be initiated anywhere, if anybody really wanted to get it going. The heads of the Veterans Administration have not been really in medical research. The present one, Mr. Gleason, is not. For many years, while we've been doing this, Dr. Middleton, who was a Dean of the University of Wisconsin, was actually dragging his feet on medical research, making it as hard as possible forus to get funds, although after he got them he sounded moderately pleased.

There's a new head of the medical services of the VA called General McNitch. I don't know what he'll turn out to be like. Dr. Debakey knows him and is mildly hopeful.

These are our struggles.

Q:

Well, you've had a breakthrough there and certainly in terms of what is now being done.

Lasker:

Yes, but not as compared with what the total money spent is. Ofcourse, the Veterans Administration spends five billion dollars overall: for care, for insurance, and for all the things that they have to do. And a billion of it goes for the medical care of veterans, and it's full care. So, what they could do clinically or inany way with that amount of paid-up patients that don't have to pay for themselves, that don't have to be specially paid, for instance if you have research patients as in most non-public hospitals, it's terribly expensive to keep track of them or to keep them in beds or to do any long-term clinical trials, and the Veterans is really the place where it can be done





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