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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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California at Berkeley. The work, I believe, was largely done by Lee, and Evans was the head of the department. Its discovery and usefulness was almost contemporaneous with the announcement that a product called cortisone, which was a product of an adrenal gland, and which ACTH activates to make cortisone, is an essential hormone to life. If you have an operation on your adrenal gland for some reason--if you have a benign tumor or malignant tumor and have to have your adrenal removed--you can't live more than 48 hours without cortisone, you must have it. And people lived quite normally. As a matter of fact, one of my friends, Tobey Davis, lives quite normally on it. She's had this operation and she's lives quite normally on it. I also know a woman who had an operation of this kind, who has lived quite normally on it and who had a child since she had this operation. Her whole hormonal activity is based on this; without it she would have died. As far as I know, she's the only woman that I've heard about who's had a child after an operation on her adrenal gland. Those are only illustrations.

But arthritis was the main disease that was influenced on a big scale by the discovery of ACTH and cortisone. Cortisone is used more in arthritis because you can take it by mouth, and ACTH must be injected. The people who were crippled and had to lie in bed--I think of one man, the father of Senator Smathers--had been able to get up and go about their business. The brother of my brother-in-law was in agony until cortisone was available.





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