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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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none at all, and it was considered such a daring thing that we didn't try to say anything about it in the press because we feared opposition to it.

During this fall, I also suggested--perhaps earlier, in the summer--to Mrs. Rosenberg that President Roosevelt, with whom she was in close touch at that time, do something to make the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the Office of Medical Research permanent things after the war and that the funds continue. She said, “Write me a memo about it,” I did. I will try to find the memo. In any case, she handed it to Roosevelt. Roosevelt handed in to Judge (Samuel) Rosenman, who also was a friend of mine, but I hadn't taken it up with him. Rosenman drafted a letter to Richards, the head of OSRD, and Richards wrote a very handsome and fine outline of what he felt was needed, called “Science: The Endless Frontier,” in which medicine was to be part of whatever was to be done about science generally.

This, inadvertently, made for problems later on, because when the President received this proposal from Richards, it was made known and Magnuson and Kilgore introduced a bill for a National Science Foundation, which was to include aid to medical research. Well, we got mixed up in our own tape, as it were, and we got out of it, as I will describe to you.

Q:

Was the bill introduced by Magnuson and Kilgore at the behest of the White House?





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