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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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moment Feldman had come and the President had said, “Now, look, let's get this done,” it might have happened.

I was in touch with Feldman the following week. Feldman talked about it a little bit, and then nothing happened. He finally said to me, “Well, the rest of us think that it isn't a very good idea. We have a President's panel on retardation and we feel that if we come out with a President's panel on stroke, this will male people think that the President is interested only in diseases that his family have been victims of. So, we don't think that's such a good idea for the present.”

Well, I didn't seem to know how to counter that at the moment, but in December of '62, we had another meeting with Sorens on, Feldman and Sidney Farber at lunch in the White House, and we started again on the fact that there should be a White House Research Conference and about what the main causes of death were, and Mike and Sorenson said, “Well, now, let's not just have this as a stroke conference; let's have it on the main causes of death, heart and cancer, o.“ And we readily said, “Why that would be simply marvelous. Let's do it.”

So, we put up a memoranda, hoping this would get done. Naturally, there was such an enormous press of business and trouble that--they were all for doing it. I sat in the room when Feldman called up the Surgeon General and said that the President wanted to do this, that they were going to go ahead on it. The Surgeon General was rather lukewarm. Bo Jones was





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