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desalinization area, and what the results of their efforts have been to date, I don't know. I'll try to get updated in this area, because I'm sure that 75 million dollars in five years, roughly 12 million dollars a year, is--well, it's better than the two million dollars that was being spent before--still not enough to make big plants produce large amounts of water at low cost even yet. The truth is that to produce water at sufficiently low cost--in some areas water seems cheap at 60 cents per thousand gallons and in very dry, out-of-the-way spots a dollar per thousand gallons is cheap, but for irrigation, let's say, in California, you have to have it at around 20 cents to compete, I believe.

Well, this would not seem to be the time to drop this question, because it's in a crucial stage, isn't it?

Yes. I was hoping that Wieaner, Kennedy's science adviser, would be interested in it, and very early in '61, January or February, I asked to see him. I saw him late in the afternoon and talked to him about this, and he said to me quite coolly, “Mrs. Lasker, this research project does not have a high priority. We're more interested in defense problems.” Well, I tried to interest them in it, but I don't think they ever gave it a very high priority in the Kennedy Administration. This is under the heading of Undone Business, of which we've had a partial success, at least with getting a new bill with a little more money in it.