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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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Part:         Session:         Page of 1143

they did stimulate it very much.

In the beginning both ACTH and cortisone were extremely scarce and very, very expensive. Cortisone was made by Merck and ACTH by Armour and in minute amounts, as of this spring of 1949. However, as time passed and the importance of these new substances became more apparent, late in '49 I felt that the Federal Government should be asked to appropriate some funds for their use in clinical research, so that doctors throughout the country could understand what were the dosages needed, what were the diseases that they were most useful in treatment of, and the supply was so scarce that their usefulness just had not been explored. And I felt that if there was earmarked money for the exploration of these two products, that it would be extremely important.

Q:

Initially they were derived rather laboriously and not at all synthetically.

Lasker:

That's right. ACTH has been sythesized, but I believe it's easier probably still to make it from the pituitaries of beef cattle, and cortisone, I think, is made at least partially sythetically now, in '62.

Q:

Mrs. Lasker, may I interpose a question there? When a breakthrough is accomplished in a research laboratory, as this was, does this mean automatically that other researchers in various





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