Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Mary LaskerMary Lasker
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 999

Lasker:

Yes. well, they did, but actually the fact that they identified the centers doesn't make the centers all that much better. That means that sometimes they get a little more money. But it doesn't mean that -- until they get better themselves as a result of the help they get from outside.

Q:

Well, were there any surprises in the centers named in March, or had you known in advance what they were going to be?

Lasker:

I knew that they were going to be -- they identify them, they say they identify them. Somehow or other there's great competition to be identified as a center.

The Lasker Foundation had decided on its 1974 awards.

Q:

Oh good, are they to be cluster awards?

Lasker:

Yes. It's one award in clinical medicine for Mr. John Charnley, a surgeon and engineer from England, who has devised a hip operation for arthritis. You probably know about it. A total replacement of the hip. It was devised by a man named Charnley, and he not only devised the socket, that they seem to be able to put into a diseased hip joint, but the plastic, liquid plastic that makes the bone and the metal of the hip socket stay solidly together. You can sort of cement the two together with this material that he helped to develop. And this has really changed the prospects for people who are otherwise totally immobile.

Q:

Wasn't that the type of operation that Margaret Chase Smith had?

Lasker:

Yes, it was, and Ormandy and Katherine Hepburn and





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help