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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts --

Q:

-- before you get off this subject may I ask something else? Would you talk about the Lasker Awards in the realm of medicine. You see so often the statement made that the Lasker Awards in the United States are the equivalent of the Nobel in medicine.

Lasker:

Well, they aren't equivalent in the sense that they don't pay as much money. We only give $10,000.

Q:

But that's monetary thing.

Lasker:

But actually we have been lucky in that our juries have selected 23 winners of the Nobel Prizes before, for our prize, before the Nobel Prize gave their prize, so that it shows that in 26 years, there were 23 winners later of the Nobel Prize. It shows that as best you can tell our awards were so well selected, and for this reason I think the Lasker Awards have a great deal of prestige in medicine.

Q:

They do indeed. Is it your intention that this shall be perpetuated through the years?

Lasker:

It's my intention, if possible, this year to do something entirely different for one year, and that is to award the men who have made five year cancer cures in various types of cancer possible. Wouldn't you like to come to that?

Q:

I would love to come to that. I think it's fascinating.

Lasker:

You see, you are just like me. You'd like to do that, wouldn't you





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