Albert Lasker
Clinical Medical Research Award

Awards Overview by Mary Lasker

Lasker Award winners, ladies and gentlemen, friends.

We are here to honor the pioneers in cancer chemotherapy.

Except for peace, the most passionately desired event of this century is a chemical cure for cancer. With radiation and surgery, only 40 percent of all cancer patients now attain five-year cures.

While no one, overall chemical cure for all types of cancer is yet available, chemical cures have been found for at least three types of cancer—choriocarcinoma, Wilms' tumor and cancers of the skin. Prolonged survivals have recently been attained in acute lymphatic leukemia and Hodgkin's disease and Burkitt's tumor. Before combination chemotherapy, lives were cut tragically short.

In 1963, the Lasker Awards honored Dr. Charles Huggins for his discovery in the early 1940s of the usefulness of estrogens against cancer of the prostate. In 1966, we honored Dr. Sidney Farber, our chairman here today, for the first use of drugs against leukemia and for his outstanding contributions in the cure of Wilms' tumor. In Wilms' tumor, he had shown that a large percentage of patients can obtain five-year cures with actinomycin D, and many are living for much longer periods of time.

Today, some of the men we are honoring have attained five-year cures for other kinds of cancer.

Other winners have prolonged productive survival of patients who are now awaiting discoveries which will provide complete cures.

In addition to the exciting and dedicated work of the men honored today, the hope for chemical cures of major cancers is heightened by the fact that at least 44 different compounds provide remissions, long or short, in about 29 types of cancer.

The major types of cancer have, by no means, been fully explored with combination chemotherapy as yet.

Therefore, we hope that the work of these Award winners will hasten the more complete exploration of drug combinations, and immunotherapy, against all forms of this disease.

Final success against cancer will depend on the clear, determined, continuing expression of the national will.

This nation's determination and competency has been demonstrated in the development of atomic energy, and in the conquest of space. There is no reason "inner space," including cancer in humans, cannot be conquered, too, and the prime of life prolonged.

President Nixon warmly supports a program for the conquest of cancer.

So, if our national will is sufficiently expressed to sustain the cancer research workers with money and enthusiasm, the chemical and immunological answers for many more types of cancer can be found in the next few years—thanks to the inspiring work and dedication of today's Award winners. Let's applaud them! Thank you.