Part: 12         Session: 145678910111213141516171819202122         Page 369370371372373374375376377378379380381382383384385386387 of 999

I went to Elliot Richardson and said, “Who in the Public Health Department or who in your department is responsible for treating the population, once drugs are available and methods are known to save people? We might save 200,000 people a year from stroke and from heart attack if these drugs were widely used and many people maintained on them.”

He said, “Well, it's a good question. My father died of hypertensior and I will look into this.” He called a meeting. I'd already talked to Dr. Coofier of the Heart Institute who was interested in the thing, and he had the VA and the National Heart Association and other people supposedly interested in the field and they concluded, yes indeed, they should do something about it. Theysent a recommendation to Richardson.

Well, about three weeks ago Deeda Blair and Mike Corman and I went back and said, “What is your decision about doing something? What is it going to be next?”

He said, “I agree with the report and I am going to implement the report, and they are putting aside about 10 million dollars to train doctors and instruct the public.”

“Monday I hope to be able to go to their meeting where they're going to start, going to commence.”

I don't know how they're going to go about it. They'll undoubtedly go about it entirely differently from the way I'd go about it, and maybe much better, but at any rate they're going to start. I said I thought this was a great moment in the history of the administration because I thought the death rate could drop 200,000