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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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that the number of deaths in the City was cut by more than half again, and that the deathrate throughout the world was changed by Isoniazid because it was a drug one could take by mouth and it was very cheap, became very cheap. It was much cheaper and easier than Streptomycin; it has to be injected.

Well, this gave me the idea that if we did research in an organized way and the City supported it, we might get even more advances. We did a Fact Sheet showing the savings that had come about by the closing of TB hospitals and the reduction of deaths, and we appealed to Wagner about this. And we also showed that syphilis had been the first to be affected by penicillin at a Public Health Service hospital on Staten Island, and that the curing of people of syphilis had provided a great boon in the United States and in the world.

Well, Wagner was open-minded about this and he did, indeed, establish something that's now called the Health Research Council of New York City, and he appointed a good group of people as members of the Council.

Q:

Did you have anything to do with its set-up?

Lasker:

Dr. Leona Baumgartner took over the matter, because she got interested, once we had sold him on the general idea, and she advised him, I think, as I recall it, on the setup of it. And I wasn't interested in anything except how much money





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