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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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were doing in cancer research, they said, “Nothing.” And when we went to the Rockefeller Institute, we found they were spending about $50,000 for cancer. When I asked Dr. Alan Gregg why they were doing nothing in cancer research, he said, “Because there aren't any ideas.”

I thought and said to my husband and others, “If there aren't any ideas, we'd better start and make some. If you have money and if people are employed to work in an area, eventually they will generate ideas,” and they have.

Q:

They start to seek and...

Lasker:

Yes, they start to think and they have generated a great number of ideas, but we still don't have the answers.

Q:

But at that time the medical world was simply baffled by this problem and didn't do anything.

Lasker:

Yes, yes, and there was no conception that any part of our gross national product or of our total tax income should go towards the thing that was making people die terrible deaths and vitiating our economy. This was true about heart and all the other major diseases as well.

It was almost incredible for me when I found it out. I thought always somebody else or something else was being done about it, but I couldn't find it. I finally found that nothing was being





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