Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Mary LaskerMary Lasker
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 1143

it up with him, and Mike Gorman also saw him and took it up with the Platform Committee. So, it became part of the Democratic Platform of 1960, a White House Conference on Medical Research, especially for heart and cancer.

Well, as soon as the President was elected Bo Jones, who was a friend of ours and for whom we'd been instrumental in his getting a job as adviser to the Secretary of HEW, started to make a recommendation to the White House to hold this conference. Believe it or not, the conference of 25 doctors interested in heart and cancer was brought together on the day of the Bay of Pigs in April, 1961. The President didn't see any of the members of the conference. He didn't enter the room, although they did meet in the White House, and Ribicoff handled it in such an offhand way that the doctors were discouraged and absolutely nothing happened as a result, as far as I know.

Q:

What sort of an engender did they have?

Lasker:

Well, they had a series of recommendations to give to the President, but in the excitement over the Cuban fiasco nothing happened about it.

Q:

So, they never did get to voice these or put them down?

Lasker:

Well, they put them down, but nothing happened: the President didn't see them and no action was taken.





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help