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

Mary LaskerMary Lasker
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 1143

same experiences in life as I had don't seem to have been led to any similar activities, and I'm always puzzled by this because it seems to me that the human race is full of illness and medical problems and it's very curious that there hasn't been more effort to find out how to control major diseases and more dynamic attempts to raise funds, voluntary, private, state, city, to do it with. It's a puzzle to me.

Q:

Yes, but some people are complacent about such things, and you, indeed, are not.

Lasker:

Yes, but I think that there are many people who are not complacent, and it just happens that I was not complacent in this particular area. And there are many other people who are enormously more effective than I am in many areas that have taken enormous steps and have been anything but complacent. For example, Seversky took enormous steps in a thing that he saw was going wrong for the nation. But something that's a waste of life and personal tragedy and illness of the whole population of the earth, and a fantastic economic loss, has just not been energetically attacked. Even now they aren't as energetically attacked as I think they should be.

Q:

Well, isn't it fortunate that you are motivated to action in this particular area?

Lasker:

Well, I hope it's fortunate. At any rate, I was motivated,





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