Biomedical Researchers Mourn The Loss Of An Advocate

Mourning the passing of philanthropist and biomedical research advocate Mary Woodard Lasker--who died February 21- -scientists and United States government officials alike are praising her unique commitment to advancing the cause of science. In lamenting her death of heart failure at her home in Greenwich, Conn., at the age of 93, they point out that no layperson is likely to come forward in the near future to take Lasker's place as a spokesperson for the research community. "She was a remarkable woman," says Paul Berg, director of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine at the Stanford University Medical Center. "Had we been wise, we would have cloned her so we could use her today." In addition to convincing U.S. government leaders to step up the budget for medical research, Lasker did her own part to fund this work. She and her husband, the late Albert D. Lasker, owner of the Lord & Thomas advertising agency, created the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation in 1942 and established the Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards, first given in 1944. The Lasker Awards have become known as the United States' premier scientific prizes; 51 recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. At press time, it was expected that the awards would continue after Lasker's death, although plans for the future of the program had not been finalized. Lasker's success as a lobbyist was attributable to "her devotion, dedication, determination--and her knowledge," says Michael E. De-Bakey, chancellor of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and chairman of the Lasker Awards jury. "She knew what the death rates were; she knew what the trends were. The congressional leaders had great admiration for her. She had the ability to transmit to them the urgency of doing something to control disease and suffering." On February 23, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) paid tribute on the Senate floor to Lasker, saying: "... we will never be able to count the number of strangers' lives that were saved by her rock-solid resolve, and her unwavering courage, and her unflagging commitment to the lives and health of others." The day before, Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) had made a statement to the Senate saying: "Her legacy is a living vibrant message that one person can make a difference." "She was unbelievably persistent and immune to any form of rejection," says Samuel Broder, director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). "Her unwillingness to accept no for an answer was very effective in its time." Lasker hired professonal lobbyists--most notably, the late Mike Gorman--to help further her objective of increasing the federal funds allocated for biomedical research. But, says Terry Lierman of Washington, D.C.-based Capitol Associates, a government-relations firm hired by Lasker, she was not a typical client. "She was the one who inspired; she taught, and she directed the war, so to speak," Lierman says. Moreover, he says, the very fact that Lasker was the client opened doors in Washington: "Just by having Mary either with you or [being] associated with her cause helped." What helped give Lasker's arguments weight, Lierman says, was her lack of self-interest. "Everyone knew that she had nothing to gain," he says. "She wasn't a scientist looking for a research grant; she wasn't a lobbyist getting paid; she wasn't a company making a product; and she wasn't a consumer who had a disease. "She believed that healthy people make a productive society," Lierman says. Even as Lasker aged, she continued to make an impression, says Stanford's Berg, who describes "the awe at watching a woman who was not well, who you knew was suffering, still with the enthusiasm to get up and travel, to go to Washington, to talk to people. She could easily go off to her Connecticut home and relax and forget about it, but she was doing what she knew was right for the country. Today, there is a paucity of leadership--we don't have the people who want to do that." Lasker was instrumental a half-century ago in urging Congress to increase federal support for the National Institutes of Health and was generally recognized as one of those responsible for creating NCI, among other NIH institutes. "When she began to get interested in this in '42 and '43, the amount [of funding for NIH] was small," says Jordan U. Gutterman, chairman of the department of clinical immunology and biological therapy at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Lasker Foundation executive vice president. "She was appalled at the lack of funds, given the size of the federal treasury," Gutterman says. Lasker devoted considerable energy to obtaining cancer research funds. In the late 1940s, she initiated the American Cancer Society's research program. She worked for passage of the National Cancer Act of 1971, which made the conquest of cancer a national goal and allocated the then- astronomical amount of $100 million for that purpose. Lasker recognized that, in order to get the bill to pass, it was necessary to demonstrate public support--and that, in order to stir up public support, it would be helpful to enlist the help of her friend Eppie Lederer, also known as Ann Landers, a nationally syndicated advice columnist. President Richard Nixon was originally opposed to spending such a large amount on research, Lederer recalls. Lasker "contacted me and said I must do something to make sure this bill gets passed," Lederer says. "I did a whole column on it; the column produced over 1 million pieces of mail. There had never been anything like this in the history of journalism. Richard Nixon could no longer ignore it." In 1985, Lederer received an Albert Lasker Public Service Award, in part to honor her support of the act. "This was the sort of thing that Mary Lasker did--she educated and alerted me so I could educate and alert the public," says Lederer. Another way in which Lasker brought the importance of medical research to the public's attention was through the Lasker Awards. "She had a very insightful and prescient recognition that an award would have value only if it was a judgment of peers--of tough peers--[rather than] the judgment of a benefactor," says NCI's Broder. Lasker's sister, Alice Fordyce, was the director of the awards program until December 1990, when Gutterman took over. Fordyce died in 1992 (B. Spector, The Scientist, Oct. 12, 1992, page 4). Lasker's last public appearance was at the Lasker Awards luncheon in October 1993 in New York City (B. Spector, The Scientist, Oct. 18, 1993, page 1). At the luncheon, keynote speaker Hillary Rodham Clinton called her "a woman who represents the ideal of American citizenship to me, a woman whose vision and intelligence, humanity, selflessness, have really been gifts to the entire nation." A Generous Contributor Lasker generously gave of her personal funds to support the work of biomedical scientists, Gutterman says: "She would give seed money to individual [researchers] in cancer, heart disease, mental health--anything that caught her interest. She did it with me with interferon research in 1977-78. She sold some paintings to support [the interferon studies]." She was also able to rustle up financial support from others, Berg says. "She came to visit me here at Stanford in early 1980," he recalls. "I was in the throes of trying to raise funds to build the Beckman Center. She was so taken with what we were trying to do that she lined up some contributors, one of whom gave us $6 million." Born in Watertown, Wis., Lasker graduated from Radcliffe College in 1923, where she studied art history. She also attended the University of Wisconsin and Washam College, Oxford. During her lifetime, Lasker received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest honor for a private citizen, from President Lyndon Johnson in 1969 and a Congressional Gold Medal from President George Bush in 1989 (The Scientist, May 29, 1989, page 17). In recognition of her support of numerous public beautification projects, a variety of pink tulip was named for her in 1985. In 1984, NIH's Mary Woodard Lasker Center for Health Research and Education was named in her honor. At the ceremony marking the event, she said, "The reason I am so dedicated to medical research and have lobbied so many congressmen and senators 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... . When I was about 10 years old, I resolved that I would try to do something when I grew up for medical research."

Biomedical Researchers Mourn The Loss Of An Advocate

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