[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 16 (Wednesday, February 23, 1994)] [Senate] [Page S] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov] [Congressional Record: February 23, 1994] From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] TRIBUTE TO MARY LASKER--A GREAT AND BELOVED LEADER IN MEDICAL RESEARCH Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the death of Mary Lasker last Monday is a great loss to the Nation. She dedicated her life and career to fighting disease and promoting medical research and better health care for the American people, and what an extraordinary job she did. Through her remarkable commitment, she became one of the most important, influential, and beloved private citizens in medical research in the Nation's history. Millions of persons in this country and around the world have benefited from her crusade to conquer disease and enhance the quality of health care for all people in all nations. When I first came to the Senate, I remember very clearly the advice that President Kennedy gave me. ``Have lunch with medical school professors, have dinner with Nobel Prize winners, but if you really want to know about what needs to be done in medical research in America, have a talk with Mary Lasker.'' Her accomplishments in advancing medical research are legendary. For half a century, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation has honored and funded many of the world's greatest medical researcher scientists. The Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards are known throughout the world, and rank very close to the Nobel Prize in international prestige. In return for her tireless dedication, Mary Lasker received numerous well-deserved awards and honors herself, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Nation's highest honor for a private citizen. In 1984, she was honored by the establishment of the Mary Woodward Lasker Center for Health Education and Research at the National Institutes of Health. Indeed, the NIH would not be the world-renowned research institute it is today without the brilliant leadership of Mary Lasker. She never lost sight of her goals or the true importance of her work. As she said at the time of the dedication of the Center, in justifying the cost of medical research, ``If you think research is expensive, try disease.'' And then she said, at the end of her address, ``Thank you all for coming to this dedication--now, we must all go and continue our work.'' The advances and discoveries generated by Mary Lasker's genius and dedication will continue to improve the lives of generations to come. She was an inspiration to all of us who knew her and who had the privilege of working with her. She was a symbol of hope to people everywhere, and we are saddened by her loss. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the obituary from this morning's Boston Globe and a series of other articles on Mary Lasker may be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From the Boston Globe, Feb. 23, 1994] Mary W. Lasker, 93; Cofounded Lasker Medical Research Award (By Tom Long) Mary (Woodard) Lasker, a philanthropist once described by polio researcher Jonas Salk as ``a match maker between science and society,'' died of heart failure Monday in her home in Greenwich, Conn. She was 93. Mrs. Lasker, along with her husband, the late Albert D. Lasker, founded the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and established the Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards. The Lasker Awards are given to honor medical, biological or clinical work that leads to significant lessening of a major cause of disability or death. Since the Lasker Awards were established in 1944, they have become one of the most prestigious in the medical profession and more than 40 Lasker winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. The daughter of a well-to-do banker, Mrs. Lasker was born in Watertown, Wis. She attended the University of Wisconsin and graduated from Radcliffe College where she majored in art history. Upon graduation, she moved to New York City, where she sold paintings for gallery owner Paul Reinhardt, whom she married in 1926. The couple divorced in 1934. In 1940, she married millionaire Chicago advertising man Albert D. Lasker. In a 1965 interview in Time Magazine, Mrs. Lasker recalled that, early in their courtship, when Mr. Lasker asked her what she most wanted to do in life, she responded, ``I want to push the idea of health insurance. Most people can't afford adequate medical care. And I want to help promote research in cancer, tuberculosis and other major diseases. Mrs. Lasker persuaded her husband to devote his promotional skill and some of his fortune to public health. In the late 1940s, the couple initiated the research program at the American Cancer Society and later turned their attention to increasing financial support of the National Institutes of Health. Mr. Lasker died of cancer in 1952 and willed half his estate, estimated in excess of $11 million, to the foundation that bears his name. After his death, Mrs. Lasker continued her fight against what she called, ``the major cripplers and killers: heart disease, cancer and stroke.'' She was a driving force behind the creation of the National Cancer Institute and several other health organizations. In a 1974 interview with the New York Times, the soft- spoken philanthropist said her campaign for public health was fueled by frustration. ``I'm very good on what we don't know in medicine,'' she said. ``It's not the will of God, it's the dumbness of man, and the lack of enterprise and money that's the problem. In 1984, the National Institutes of Health named the Mary Woodard Lasker Center for Health Research and Education in her honor. Mrs. Lasker also had a passion for flowers. As early as 1943 she began brightening up New York City parks and streets with flowers. In 1956, she instituted the seasonal planting of tulips and daffodils along Park Avenue. She was also active in Lady Bird Johnson's efforts to beautify America. In 1965, Mrs. Lasker donated 10,300 azalea bushes and 150 dogwood trees to help brighten Washington, D.C. She also donated 40,000 daffodill plants and several hundred cherry trees to beautify the United Nations in New York City. In the interview with Time Magazine, she said. ``I am mainly interested in medical research. The flowers are just a little thing to keep me from being depressed until a cure is found for diseases like cancer and arteriosclerosis.'' Mrs. Lasker was the recipient of more than 60 awards and medals. In 1969, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented her with the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest honor for a private citizen. In 1987, Congress authorized the striking of a special gold medal in her honor ``in recognition of her humanitarian contributions in the areas of medical research and education, urban beautification and the fine arts.'' In 1992, she was awarded the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism in Philantrophy from Johns Hopkins University. Mrs. Lasker remained vigorous throughout her life. Her last public appearance was in October at the 1993 Albert Lasker Awards luncheon in New York City keynoted by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. She leaves two stepsons Francis Brody and Edward Lasker, both of Los Angeles. Funeral arrangements are private. A memorial service will be held in the spring. ____ [From the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation] Mary Woodard Lasker, Health Crusader and Philanthropist, is Dead at Age 93 New York, NY, February 22, 1994.--Mary Woodard Lasker, the indomitable philanthropist who for more than fifty years was a leading national force in promoting biomedical research and better health for Americans died yesterday, February 21, at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut. She was 93. Mrs. Lasker died of heart failure, her nephew, James Woodard Fordyce, said. Mrs. Lasker created with her husband, the late Albert D. Lasker, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and established the Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards as one of science's most prestigious awards. These awards, given for significant achievement in basic and clinical medical research, have long been considered second only in prestige to the Nobel Prizes. Mary Lasker believed that ``money could buy ideas'' and that leadership was needed to encourage those who have the stuff of genius to focus their energies on medical research. She sought to encourage and honor discoverers who might otherwise have gone all but unrecognized, and to bring dignity to their work. Mrs. Lasker remained vigorous and active throughout her life. Her last public appearance was at the 1993 Albert Lasker Awards luncheon, keynoted by First Lady Hillary Clinton, last October in New York City. The Lasker Foundation and its awards program was founded in 1944 by the Laskers to draw attention to the major advances in both medical and clinical medical research and to stimulate Federal support for the medical sciences. Mrs. Lasker was one of the country's most remarkable women and outstanding citizens. She was a key architect in this nation's cancer initiatives. With a talent for persuasion, she was enormously effective in changing the course of modern science through her catalytic role in obtaining public financial support for medical research. Together with her husband in the late 1940s, she initiated the research program of the American Cancer Society and later turned her attention to increasing financial support for the National Institutes of Health, whose budget today exceeds $10 billion. Dr. Jonas Salk said, ``When I think of Mary Lasker, I think of a matchmaker between science and society.'' Business Week called her the ``fairy Godmother of medical research''. She waged an effective behind the scenes attack on what she called the ``major cripplers and killers''--heart disease, cancer, and stroke in the United States. She was widely regarded as a driving force behind the creation of the National Cancer Institute and of several other of the National Institutes of Health. Her work urging legislation to expand federal cancer research culminated in a 1971 bill that made the conquest of cancer a national goal. In 1984, Mrs. Lasker was honored by the naming of a Center at the National Institutes of Health, the Mary Woodard Lasker Center for Health Research and Education. Her life was a demonstration of how one unelected, unappointed, but highly intelligent and deeply committed private citizen could work with government officials for the benefit of all Americans. Medicine was not the only area in which Mary Lasker worked to transform life around her. She had a passion for environmental beautification. As early as 1943 she began brightening New York City's bleak parks and streets with flowers. in 1956 she initiated the seasonal plantings down the center of Park Avenue in New York City and funded the planting of 20 blocks of tulips and daffodils. With her good friend, Lady Bird Johnson, she worked to stimulate interest in the beautification of cities and parks around the country. She generously gave azalea bushes, daffodil bulbs, dogwood trees, and cherry trees both in New York City and in Washington, D.C. to brighten those cityscapes. But she said, ``I am mainly interested in medical research.'' In 1969, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented her with the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest honor for a private citizen. In 1987, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives authorized President Bush to strike a special Gold Medal in her honor ``in recognition of her humanitarian contributions in the areas of medical research and education, urban beautification, and the fine arts.'' She used this occasion to urge President Bush to throw his support behind augmenting the national research effort. She was the recipient of numerous honors and recognition including the Radcliffe Achievement Award, that college's highest honor. In 1987 she received a Doctor of Humanities Degree from Harvard University and in 1989 the Harvard School of Public Health established the Mary Woodard Lasker Professorship of Health Sciences to perpetuate her life crusade for the discovery of knowledge to promote human health. She was the recipient of more than 60 awards and medals, most recently the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism in Philanthropy from The Johns Hopkins University in 1992. She also served in numerous board and trustee positions for health, cultural and educational organizations. Mrs. Lasker, who was born in Watertown, Wisconsin, was the daughter of Frank Elwin and Sara Johnson Woodard. She attended the University of Wisconsin and Radcliffe College where she studied art history and graduated with honors. She also studied at Wadham College, Oxford. Her first marriage in 1926 to art gallery owner Paul Reinhardt ended in divorce. In 1940, she married Albert Davis Lasker, the creative and legendary genius of modern advertising. When he retired from his business, Lord & Thomas, the predecessor firm to Foote, Cone, & Belding, Mrs. Lasker persuaded him to divert his promotional genius and some of his fortune to public health and she carried on this passionate work until her death. In their life together Mrs. Lasker and her husband amassed an important collection of art which included Renoirs and the works of Matisse, Picasso, Dufy, Chagall and others. Many of these were sold in later years with the proceeds contributed to Mrs. Lasker's philanthropic projects. Mrs. Lasker had no children. She is survived by her nephew, James W. Fordyce of Greenwich, and by her step children Francis Brody and Edward Lasker, both of Los Angeles, five step grandchildren, two step great-grandchildren and three great-nephews. Funeral rites and burial will be private. A memorial service will be held in the spring. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be sent to the Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards. ____ [From Architectural Digest, Oct. 1985] Profiles: Mary Lasker (By Valentine Lawford) Though human beings who fight for causes may eventually achieve heroic stature in the eyes of posterity, they tend by and large to make their contemporaries feel uncomfortable. Mary Lasker of New York is a shining exception to the rule. Part of the reason lies in the nature of the causes she champions. Today, medical research and urban beautification are recognizable as two facets of the same unmistakably good cause: the enhancement of human life. But another reason is Mrs. Lasker herself--her combination of forcefulness and warmth of heart, efficiency and charm, public spirit and personal devotion to friends, and her ability to persuade while giving credit where it is due. She is a philanthropist in the most complete sense of the word. Unlike many would-be reformers who start with an impersonal blueprint and end by trying to impose it dogmatically on others, she reasons from the personal to the universal. In short, she is someone with whom it is impossible not to identify and empathize. Of her passionate interest in medical research, Mary Lasker says simply: ``I cannot bear to see people suffering from uninvestigated disease. When I was a very young child in Wisconsin, I suffered from all the childhood illnesses. One day I overheard a friend of the family say to my mother, `Sara, I don't think you will ever raise her,' and that made me mad! My grandfather was crippled by arthritis, and both of my parents, who suffered from high blood pressure, eventually died of heart disease. I decided that such things just should not be, and that I would do something myself about it and get others to do something, too.'' After her marriage in 1940 to advertising pioneer Albert D. Lasker, she began to put her ideas into practice--winning the sympathy and support of influential members of Congress, enlisting the aid of eminent doctors and surgeons and generous private citizens, and stimulating public interest in the fight against disease. In 1942, she and her husband established the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation--backed solely by their own funds--for the promotion of medical research, public health and education, and human welfare. For nearly a half-century, the Lasker Foundation has achieved national and international renown. It has given annual awards since 1944 for outstanding work in medical research and public health administration, and for superior reporting on these subjects. Of the recipients of Lasker Awards in the course of four decades, no less than forty have subsequently received Nobel Prizes. In May 1984, Congress passed legislation honoring Mrs. Lasker by naming a new research center at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland after her. Speaking at the dedication ceremony, she said: ``Medical research saves lives and eliminates suffering; it also saves over $13 million in our economy for every dollar invested. If you think research is expensive, try disease.'' Like her battle against disease, Mrs. Lasker's fight against urban ugliness was inspired by childhood experience. Her mother was instrumental in the establishment of two public parks in Watertown, Wisconsin, where the family lived. It was in memory of her mother that Mary Lasker made her first contribution, in 1942, to the beautification of New York City--a gift of millions of hardy chrysanthemum seeds for massive plantings in five park areas. After Albert Lasker's death in 1952, his widow and her stepchildren gave 300 Japanese cherry trees and 40,000 white daffodils in his memory to the gardens of the United Nations. Four years later, Mrs. Lasker donated thousands of daffodils and tulips to be planted along twenty blocks of Park Avenue--partly to demonstrate that they could thrive there, in spite of air pollution. And she has personally contributed 10,000 azalea bushes, 900 cherry trees, 2,500 dogwoods and over a million daffodils to the beautification of Washington, D.C. Since 1981, Mary Lasker's horticultural benefactions to New York City have centered on the Park Avenue Malls Planting Project, a community effort to enhance nearly fifty blocks of the avenue with tulip bulbs, annuals and shrubs, Christmas trees, fields of wildflowers, and annually seeded and fertilized lawns. The project's yearly order of 82,000 tulip bulbs from Holland is one of the largest private orders from Dutch bulb growers, second only to the queen of England's. Each spring the tulips burst into bright yellow bloom, and are followed in summer by carpets of begonias--a gardening miracle, given the smoke and heat from the train that runs directly beneath the avenue and the meager two feet of soil in which they are planted. It is scarcely surprising that Mary Lasker should have received so many awards and honors, including ten academic degrees, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the cross of Officier de la Legion d'Honneur from the president of the French Republic. She is also a board member of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., of the Norton Simon Museum in Los Angeles and of the Leeds Castle Foundation in Great Britain. Despite a hectic schedule--she continues as president of the Lasker Foundation and serves as a trustee of several other public-spirited organizations as well--Mary Lasker remains genial and easily approachable. She enjoys parties and has given many notable ones herself. Important French Impressionist works of art were a feature of her former house on Beekman Place, and today she displays a collection of contemporary American paintings in her United Nations Plaza apartment and office. Weekends are spent at her country house in Greenwich, Connecticut, where she can indulge her passion for roses. She delights in the company of her family, especially of her three great-nephews, the grandsons of her sister and close collaborator, Alice Fordyce. She has taped a series of messages to them, for delivery when they reach a suitable age. An excerpt: ``Go to good colleges and universities. Spend a year or two abroad, at Oxford or in Paris, for example. Become really proficient in at least one foreign language. And to cope with the politics of the twenty-first century, it may be useful to have some familiarity with psychiatry and psychoanalysis.'' Mrs. Lasker's emphasis on education extends naturally to research, her most effective tool and weapon. Discussing the areas of research she's especially interested in now, she says: ``We need to find a vaccine against cancer, and we have to discover more cancer viruses in order to produce a good vaccine. We must promote more research into diseases of the heart and all neurological diseases in order to prolong human life. We can do almost anything today, work untold wonders as far as mechanical things are concerned, but we do little or nothing to improve human beings. We are just not using our brains!'' Mary Lasker drives a hard bargain, and the Lasker legend of accomplishment, in all its facets, is widespread. Not long ago, a New York cab driver, taking a European visitor downtown to catch a train, proudly gestured toward the flowers, shrubs and trees along Park Avenue. ``You know who's responsible for all this?'' he asked his fare. ``A lady called Mrs. Mary Lasker. We could do with a lot more of her kind.'' ____ [From the Journal of the American Medical Association, Oct. 2, 1991] The Lasker Awards--Honoring the Spirit of Medical Science (By Dennis L. Breo) Beauty is truth, Truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, And all ye need to know. --John Keats Keats died in 1821 at the age of 25, a victim of ``consumption'' in the years before medicine fully understood ``contagion'' and knew how to cure tuberculosis. This has next to nothing to do with the subject of this article, the Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards, which were presented in New York on September 27 and which are the focus of two papers in this issue of JAMA. Nothing except to note that Mary Lasker, who created the awards and named them in honor of her late husband, has a rare passion for beauty and a rare rage against disease. A mover of mountains to motivate medical research in America, Lasker forced upon others the saving truth that the beauty of science can often cure the ugliness of disease. A woman of both poetry and power, she sold the dream. When the history of 20th-century science is written, it may well show that two of the very most important players are a pair of remarkable sisters from tiny Watertown, Wis.--Mary Woodard Lasker, now 90, and her indispensable ally and sibling, Alice Woodard Fordyce, 84. Neither has ever looked into a microscope nor would they recognize what they saw, but their persuasiveness, persistence, and perspicacity have helped cause billions of dollars to be allocated for thousands of researchers to benefit millions of patients. Sam Broder, MD, the director of the National Cancer Institute, says, ``The story of Mary Lasker is well known, she has been recognized by essentially everybody, and she has meant essentially everything not only to the National Cancer Institute but to the entire National Institutes of Health. She is a genius who forced the realization that the federal government must commit itself to medical research to benefit all Americans.'' Broder's predecessor, Vincent T. DeVita, presented Lasker with the NCI's ``Year 2000 Award'' in 1987 and noted, ``Mary Lasker is unique. She is this country's First Lady of science and medicine. In truth, without her efforts, there would be no National Cancer Act, no capacity to approach the cancer problem in any organized way, no capacity to set our goals for the year 2000 . . . no mandate to think of a world without cancer. Like those few people with vision, Mary's eyes have always been able to look farther than they can see.'' a seller of dreams Mary Woodard was a successful businesswoman in New York in 1940 when she met and married Albert Lasker, the father of modern advertising. Himself a genius and the owner of a great fortune, Lasker, like his wife, believed that education and knowledge could change the world. Within 2 years of their marriage, he divested his agency, Lord & Thomas, and joined his wife in a crusade to breathe life--and dollars--into the moribund American Society for the Control of Cancer, as the MD-dominated agency was known in those days, and the National Institutes of Health. Their remarkable success is a tribute to the can do American spirit. From the beginning, the awards program, which is administered by the Lasker Foundation, was meant to motivate basic and clinical research against this nation's major cripplers and killers--heart disease, cancer, mental illnesses, respiratory diseases, arthritis, and neurological diseases. Ironically, Lasker himself died of colon cancer in 1952. The first Albert Lasker Medical Research Award was presented in 1944 to Col. William C. Menninger for his ``outstanding contribution to the advancement of mental health in the field of war psychiatry.'' Subsequent winners have been honored for breakthroughs in everything from making penicillin available to understanding retroviruses. Since these awards were established, 49 Lasker Award winners have later won Nobel Prizes. Lewis Thomas, MD, observed in remarks upon the 40th anniversary of the program, ``the average lag [between a researcher winning a Lasker and then a Nobel], if it can respectfully be called that, has been 5 years. The Lasker juries have been prescient.'' The lion's share of the credit for the awards and what they have meant quite properly goes to Mary Lasker, but Alice Fordyce, the lady who has directed the program and who has handed out the inscribed ``Winged Victory of Samothrace'' statuettes (symbolizing victory against premature death and disability), has also been a driving force, though she insists upon staying in the background. Indeed, the two sisters deserve their own Nobel Prize and, perhaps, even a Lasker Award. In 1942, the United States was spending virtually nothing on cancer research--certainly far less than was being spent by Albert Lasker's clients to launch advertising campaigns for toothpaste! Today, the NCI has an annual budget exceeding $1 billion. Fordyce agreed to an interview with this reporter to discuss the accomplishments of her sister, but clearly, she too is deserving. Dr. Thomas, himself a Lasker winner as ``the poet laureate of 20th-century medical science,'' once observed of Fordyce: ``Both myself and many other scientists, more stubborn, busier, and with all their own prior engagements, have found it impossible to escape being organized by this lady . . . she is an absolutely irresistible force.'' Fordyce lives and works in an airy, strikingly appointed and designed apartment in Manhattan's United Nations Plaza. The apartment, which was designed by her late architect husband Allmon Fordyce, commands a panoramic view of the East River and is only a few floors below the dramatic town apartment kept by Mary Lasker, who on this day, does not feel up to an interview. The Woodard sisters have come a long way from Watertown, but Fordyce summarizes: ``In those days, a young woman went East to college and then got a job in Manhattan. Things just naturally happened.'' Pointing out the window, Fordyce observes, ``Mary planted those chrysanthemums and flowering cherry trees you see below in honor of our mother, who was a great lover of flowers and beauty. The Lasker success story is simple, though profound. The mother imbued her two daughters with a passion for beauty. Mary Lasker, who often says, ``I am opposed to heart attacks and cancer and strokes the way I am opposed to sin,'' has always believed that ``the ugliness of disease is not the will of God,'' (Lasker herself had a major stroke in 1981 but has made a remarkable recovery.) She resolved to persuade others to find the causes of disease, not just treat the symptoms. Sara Johnson Woodard, the mother of Mary Lasker and Alice Fordyce, grew up amid the pastoral beauty of Northern Ireland as the 11th of 17 children. She came to the United States in 1880 and was appalled by the grime and grit of Chicago. Alice Fordyce says, ``Mother rode into Chicago one day on the Rock Island Railroad and burst into tears, exclaiming, `It's just so ugly.''' Later, after she had married prominent banker Frank Woodard and moved to Watertown, Wis., to raise her two daughters, Sara Woodard saw to it that two parks and a public library were established and that many flowers were planted. ``She taught us a love of beauty,'' Fordyce recalls, ``and she also taught us to cause other people to bloom.'' This would become the great gift of Mary Lasker--to recognize and encourage possibilities in others, especially medical policymakers and researchers. Famed as the ``Great Persuader,'' she became a national resource, like iron and timber. Gifted with a smile that could warm a room and a computer-like ability to track multiple projects, she once moved a scientist to remark that her presence ``caused us all to perk up, as if the sun had just come out.'' She often said, ``It's a personal world and ideas come from minds in collision. Continents have been discovered, laws passed, buildings built, books written because the right two people met at a party or on a ship.'' The meeting of Mary and Albert Lasker was one such collision, and its shock waves affected Congressmen, Presidents, and the American people. Medical research was the idea she chose to promote. Her determination was deeply rooted in personal experiences. Frail and often ill as a child, Mary Lasker suffered from recurrent ear infections and was furious that doctors could not help her. At age 4, she and her mother visited their cleaning woman, who had just had both breasts removed because of cancer. The memory is unforgettable--``that poor woman lying in bed, suffering so terribly, and nothing could be done.'' Both her parents suffered from hypertension, and the only advice given to them was ``to avoid excitement and stress.'' Later, as an exceedingly popular coed at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the pretty and talented Mary Woodard and many of her classmates were stricken by the flu epidemic of 1918, an epidemic for which medicine had little to offer. Halfway through her sophomore year, Mary was taken out of school by her mother, who stayed with her in a Midwestern spa until she had regained her health. Once recovered, she switched to Radcliffe, where she graduated cum laude with a degree in art appreciation and history. Many years later, in 1943, the Laskers' cook was stricken with cancer and consigned to a ``home for incurables,'' where she eventually died. The doctor would not tell Mary what the problem was, since in those days demons like ``cancer'' and ``mental illness'' were spoken of in whispers. She was told that nothing could be done. Mary Lasker thought to herself, ``Well, that's a fine kettle of fish . . . all we can do is treat the symptoms and send her away. We need to find the cause and to cure it.'' Taking cancer out of the closet The rest, of course, is richly known history. Dr. Howard Rusk, the former director of the New York University Medical Center's rehabilitation clinic, once said, ``Mary Lasker has done more to promote medical research than any other living person.'' Mary and Albert Lasker are the ones who, in the 1940s, convinced David Sarnoff, then the powerful head of the Radio Corporation of America, that it was OK to mention the word ``cancer'' on the airwaves. Later, she persuaded the Reader's Digest to run a series of articles on cancers and to include at the end a chance for readers to contribute money for research. This helped launch the fund-raising efforts of the American Cancer Society, and she insisted that 25% of all funds be earmarked for research. Disgruntled doctors at first threatened to resign at this sign of lay influence and at her insistence that the society's board include nonphysicians, but the resistance soon capitulated in the wake of her successful fund-raising. In 1949, she created the Albert Lasker Medical Journalism Awards and helped put medical stories on the front page of the nation's newspapers. President John F. Kennedy reportedly once told his brother Edward, then newly elected to the US Senate: ``Have lunch with medical school professors, have dinner with Nobel Prize winners, but if you really want to know about what needs to be done in medical research in America, have a talk with Mary Lasker.'' Throughout it all, Mary Lasker has walked with Presidents, lived like royalty in elegant country and town homes that showcase art masterpieces and spectacular gardens, and acted as ``Mary Appleseed,'' even persuading the politicians of New York to lay a carpet of daffodils and tulips down the mall in the middle of Park Avenue. At 90, she remains excited about the possibility of a vaccine against cancer, a safeguard against the pernicious killer whose 200-plus different forms attack 35 major sites in the body. As usual, she is leaving nothing to chance. She told Cancer News, a publication of the American Cancer Society, ``We're so smart about weapons. We spend billions and billions for weapons to kill people. Why not spend to keep people alive? That's what the American Cancer Society is all about.'' Alice Fordyce says, ``When I think of Mary, I think of her great charm and intelligence and perseverance and persistence and her great taste. She can thank our Irish mother for much of this. It's true that she was extraordinarily persuasive--a seller of dreams, really--but she also had very good ideas. And they were not selfish ideas. They were ideas to help others.'' A grateful nation has heaped honors upon Mary Lasker. In 1984, Congress named a new center, the Mary Woodard Lasker Center for Health Research and Education at NIH, in her honor. Her countless awards include the Medal of Freedom in 1969 from President Lyndon Johnson, a personal friend, and a special Congressional Gold Medal in 1989. She used the latter occasion to prod President George Bush to spend more for health research. ``We're Democrats of course,'' Alice Fordyce says, ``and in Democratic administrations, Mary often visited the White House. The Republicans, I sometimes think, are allergic to spending for medical research, and we're fast losing our international leadership in science. It's shocking, and it makes me very cross. The federal budget process is beyond me, but I know that we can do more.'' Fordyce has served as the executive vice president of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, the director of the Lasker Medical Journalism Awards (discontinued in 1970), and the director of the Lasker Medical Research Awards. Dr. Thomas calls her a ``phenomenon . . . a skilled and artistic arranger of flowers and people.'' Indeed, she developed many of these skills during her early career as a public affairs executive for the Rockefeller Center. Among her many bright ideas, she counts suggestions to build the Rainbow Room at the top of the building and the skating pond at the bottom. awards still valuable Still, she frets that this article ``must not put me front and center, because I'm not a front-and-center person. Make sure you mention Mike DeBakey, who's been chairman of our jury for 20 years or so and who does a marvelous job. The Lasker Awards are valuable because they're awarded by the researchers' peers. What has always dazzled me is that when the chips are down the jurors vote for scientific merit and not for their favorites.'' Herself blessed with robust good health, Alice Fordyce still enjoys travel, especially to China, and has recently taken up a new interest--organizing outings to listen to barge chamber music. Hers, too, is a richly lived life. She notes that the Lasker Awards were not presented in 1990, a development that caused great consternation in the scientific community. ``Well,'' Fordyce says, ``I'm a very unconsulted consultant and I don't know what was going through Mary's mind, but she simply decided that, maybe, we had done enough, that there was no longer a need for the awards.'' Wrong. ``The outcry from the scientific community was very gratifying,'' Fordyce says. ``Spontaneously, without prompting, many leading scientists called to say, `Mary, you can't do this . . . it's like closing down the Metropolitan Museum of Art' and other comments of this nature. Well, Mary was persuaded, and the awards were resumed.'' She concludes, ``We're not going to be around forever, of course. I would certainly hope that somebody will keep the awards going in Mary's memory.'' ____ Address of Mary Lasker at the Dedication of the Mary Woodard Lasker Center for Medical Research and Health Education, National Institutes of Health, September 19, 1984 I am deeply honored that this land for research and training is named in my honor, but the real honor goes to the scientists who are dedicating their lives for the benefit of mankind. We will see to it that there are many buildings on this site in the future. The reason I am so dedicated to medical research and have lobbied so many Congressman and Senators in this room is that when I was very young, I was sick a great deal and had severe infections of the ears, causing the most agonizing pain. In those days polio was still rampant and there were no antibiotics and no polio vaccines. These discoveries obviated the terrible pain and saved tens of thousands of lives. When I was about ten years old I resolved that I would try to do something when I grew up for medical research, and this center named for me symbolizes this early resolve. I hope this property and facility and others like it will inspire young people and old to dedicate their lives to the furthering of medical knowledge that will alleviate suffering of people with cancer and other dread diseases. Yet our mission and purpose in life unlike any other that I know of has remained non-partisan, due to a large measure by the actions of those here today--and by many who preceeded them in the White House and Congress. The press pays little heed to what goes on here, it is slow, grudging but vital work. The fruits of all our labors throughout the years will: Alleviate pain where there is suffering; Provide the freedom to live in health so that we can fulfill our promise and quest in the pursuit of happiness; and To provide hope where none existed before. This is our mission--we have already begun. It is a terrible thing to envision the lives lost, the crippling and the pain occurring while all of us are here. Our duty is more urgent today than ever before. Economically, our leaders must soon realize that funding for medical research saves lives, and eliminates suffering. It also saves over $13 in our economy for every $1 invested! We must all come to the immediate conclusion that if you think research is expensive--try disease. In his own wisdom, Senator Magnuson said ``health is the first wealth of a nation''. Without it we have nothing. I would add that: with it we have hope and at least the ability to look forward and work toward a better life. It is the duty of everyone who receives funding from the NIH to work for and fulfill the goal of medical treatment, cure and prevention and to give this country and the world the benefit of every penny spent. It is the obligation of everyone to support this effort and our public leaders so that we can fulfill our mission. Do you realize that at least 1,000 people a day die of cancer? With persistent research and substantial financial support, we should be able to further lower the death rate dramatically for all diseases! Thank you for your own contributions to this coming victory and for coming to this dedication--now, we must all go and continue our work. ____________________