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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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Lasker:

Well, he'd worked very hard and so did Lloyd on this, and it was their impression that they had stirred up a large amount of interest in the State Department and that they had been influential in getting the NIH to make a survey of what funds they were spending in fertility control or in the whole field of human fertility. Naturally, the NIH has long been frightened of doing anything in this area because they felt the Catholics in Congress would cut their appropriations if they did. So, they finally found what they said was about six million dollars worth of research out of the total budget of the National Institutes of Health, and I'm sure a lot of that was what one would call fundamental work and not at all directed to any practical testing of product. But, actually, they stirred up a good deal of interest in association with the Planned Parenthood Federation. Dean Rusk took an interest in the problem and I remember being at a meeting where Dean Rusk asked the heads of private foundations to support research in the field of contraception. Actually, President Kennedy last spring, the spring of '63, made a statement that he felt that much more research should be done in this area and that countries which wanted aid from the United States in this area should not be denied it, or something permissive like that. At any rate, Kennedy's statement emboldened other members of the Administration to talk more freely about it. Stevenson made a speech last fall on the subject of birth control at the Planned Parenthood Federation dinner, which was much more open and in favor of action in this area than he had ever made before. I'm sure he





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