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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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terrible if anything really got done. But he didn't realize that. He really is a man of good will. He just didn't realize that the NIH has been philosophically totally opposed to bringing any scientific answers to people. They just want to be a storehouse of information and basic research but not to bring anything to people. They decided it wasn't their mission. Can you imagine?

Q:

When was that decision made? It wasn't always --

Lasker:

-- it grew upon them, and nobody disillusioned them, because everybody in the Senate of course took it for granted now that they were doing the maximum to conquer every disease that the were appropriating money for. But not at all. They were getting basic information together about it and putting it on the shelf. It wasn't their mission to really go and prove that anything would conquer anything.

Well, really, Rogers hadn't understood that and I don't know if he completely understands it now, but he understands it better. At any rate, when we saw this we realized we would have trouble with Rogers, but we then didn't know that he would be the chairman of the subcommittee.

Finally when we got the bill out of the Senate- no, before that it was going to be obvious that Staggers, who was our friend, was going to have to appoint a new chairman of the subcommittee on Health, of Interstate and Foreign Commerce (he's chairman of that) so we said to him, “Listen, if you appoint Rogers, he's against this bill. This bill is going to be the best thing that could ever happen in the field of cancer.”

He said, “Absolutely, it's the thing that my friend Matt Nealey died of and he was trying to get a cancer bill for years and nothing was





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