Mary Woodward Lasker Award
for Public Service

Thank you all for this tremendous honor, which is as gratifying as it is humbling.

Late in her life, Mary Lasker was asked by a reporter—if she had to start all over again, whether she would consider a career as a scientist. "Oh no!" she replied, "I couldn't cut up a frog! And I certainly couldn't perform surgery! Nobody would have me in their laboratory for five minutes!"

I am not a scientist. I am not a researcher. I am not a clinician. But for more than two decades, I have been privileged to walk in your company… as an advocate for your work and for the patients whose lives you save. And today, I thank the entire Lasker Foundation, the board, and all you, for the recognition and validation that comes with this honor.

In my life, I have been blessed to serve in many capacities with many titles. But none—none—compare with the honor of being named a recipient of an award graced with the name Mary Lasker.

As children growing up in Peoria, Illinois, my sister Suzy and I knew about Mary Lasker—as a magazine once called her—"the fairy godmother of medical research."

As a college student in the early 1970s, I watched in awe as she persuaded the President and Congress to declare a national war on cancer.

And as the founder of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, I will never forget meeting her for the first time—when our friend Deeda Blair took me to her apartment here in New York.

On that day I came face-to-face with my personal hero. Mary Lasker was what I and so many other advocates strove to be—in the words of Jonas Salk—"a matchmaker between science and society."

If I can leave you with one message in my brief time with you it is this: No disease is cured in a laboratory alone. Society looks to science to help alleviate suffering. And science looks to society for the funding and public support that make new discoveries, drugs and treatments possible.

I can think of no better way to honor the life and legacy of Mary Lasker, or the spirit of this award, than to rededicate ourselves to the mission and message of her life.

Let us ensure that science continues to reach out and speak clearly to the American people who are called upon to support cutting-edge research.

Let us continue to build a true Culture of Awareness so that society values research as the indispensable down payment on future discoveries and cures.

And let us, like Mary Lasker, teach and inspire the next generation of advocates so that there will always be loving matchmakers between society and science.