Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Remarks on Mental Retardation to a Group From the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation.

June 15, 1964

Mr. Shriver, Mrs. Shriver, ladies and gentlemen:

Thirty years ago, or even 3 years ago, if anyone had asked what was being done about mental retardation, the answer would have been just a shrug of the shoulder. Your presence here this afternoon indicates how our answer and our attitude has changed. We are answering with our hearts and our heads, not with shrugs and silence.

All Americans can be proud and grateful for the results. Mental retardation afflicts nearly 6 million Americans. It affects 10 times more persons than diabetes, 20 times more than tuberculosis, 600 times more than polio. A retarded child is born every 5 minutes, 126,000 every year.

Yet, until very recently, our knowledge and interest in this crippler was little greater in the 20th century than it had been in the 1st century. Today we can say objectively that more has been done in the Government in the past 2 years than in the previous 200 years to meet the challenge of mental retardation.

Announcements which can be made this afternoon reflect the pace of our progress. First, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has approved grants which will result in construction of two mental retardation research centers, one on the east coast, the other on the west coast.

Second, the Civil Service Commission has successfully begun a pioneering program for employing the mentally retarded, 85 percent of whom are employable. We are confident industry, like Government, will find these people make capable, devoted workers at many levels.

Third, the Advertising Council is making the subject of mental retardation their number one effort, a long step forward to awakening public awareness.

Fourth, the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce is dedicating the energy and enterprise of its fine members to the support of this program.

Fifth, most encouraging of all are the results promised by development of a simple, inexpensive, and accurate test for detection of the condition which causes mental retardation. The PKU tests, made within the first 72 hours after birth, promise to permit salvaging children from retardation by special diets inaugurated early in their lives.

Research indicates this: that at a cost of $420 we could have detected the 840 cases of retardation among newborn babies with a saving of $80 million which is the cost of their institutional care for a lifetime.

We are making spectacular progress on many fronts. The future is exciting and gratifying. The gains achieved and the gains to come are due to the compassion and the courage of the man who focused our national conscience and our capabilities on this most important problem, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Seventeen months ago, in his message to Congress on retardation, President Kennedy touched the untouchable,1 and today, only a short time later, a revolution in the field of retardation is under way. That work is being given the most able direction and leadership of the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation under the tireless guidance of Mrs. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, to whom the parents of many children yet unborn will some day owe a great debt.

1 See "Public Papers of the President, John F. Kennedy 1963," p. 170.

Yes, we have made progress. But our efforts have only begun. We will continue until we find all the answers we have been seeking, until we find a place for all those who suffer with this problem. I believe we will accomplish more toward overcoming retardation in the next 5 years than the world has accomplished in the last 500 years.

All of you are participating in a richly rewarding effort and I both thank you and congratulate you.

Note: The President spoke late in the afternoon in the Rose Garden at the White House. His opening words referred to R. Sargent Shriver, executive director of the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation and Director of the Peace Corps, and Mrs. Shriver, executive vice president of the Foundation.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks on Mental Retardation to a Group From the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239408

Filed Under

Categories

Location

Washington, DC

Simple Search of Our Archives