Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Remarks at the first Meeting of the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke

April 17, 1964

Ladies and gentlemen:

On beautiful days like this, the President and schoolboys have a hard time staying indoors. I think we would set a good example for the Nation, and we would advance the cause that brings us together, if we would take time for a brisk walk outside this morning. I am a subscriber to the view once expressed that if you want to know if your brain is flabby, you better feel of your legs.

Health is something that we treasure in this house where you have gathered this morning, and I know it is treasured in every house throughout our land and around the world. It was said several centuries ago, health is the greatest of all possessions. A pale cobbler is better than a sick king.

The work that you have begun today is work in which f have the keenest and the greatest and the most personal interest. You are here to begin mapping an attack by this Nation upon the three great killers, the three great cripplers--heart, cancer, and stroke disease. These three account for the majority of deaths and much of the serious disability which strike our people every year.

I have asked you to undertake these three objectives: first, to measure the full magnitude of the impact of these diseases upon the Nation; second, to evaluate our resources for acquiring new knowledge; third, to identify the obstacles which stand in the way of advancing knowledge and give us guidelines on overcoming those obstacles.

To this group I do not think I need to tell you how vital this is. Unless we do better, two-thirds of all Americans now living will suffer or die from cancer, heart disease, or stroke. I expect you to do something about it. five million Americans a year are struck down in the prime of life by heart attacks, often fatal. Every 2 minutes cancer strikes a man or a woman or a child in this country. Every year strokes leave 200,000 Americans dead and another 2 million incapacitated.

I want us to put our great resources-and they are unlimited--to work to overcome this. We can, and because of the work you will do, I believe we will. So let me say this: I know there are some differing viewpoints about the prospects for success in these fields, but from what some of you on this Commission have reported to me, and from some other sources that I believe in, I think our goals are in sight. It is well within the range of reasonable expectation that work being done now in regard to controlling growth of cells in the human body will bring decisive victories over heart disease and cancer and strokes.

The point is, we must conquer heart disease, we must conquer cancer, we must conquer strokes. This Nation and the whole world cries out for this victory. I am firmly convinced that the accumulated brains and determination of this Commission and of the scientific community of the world will, before the end of this decade, come forward with some answers and cures that we need so very much.

When this occurs--not "if," but "when," and I emphasize "when"--we will face a new challenge and that will be what to do within our economy to adjust ourselves to a life span and a work span for the average man or woman of 100 years.

Knowing Government as I do, I am sure some President someday will be appointing a commission to study that very great problem, and I would be pleased to be that President. If you do your work well and if you do your work with dispatch, maybe I will have that privilege.

I have often been reminded myself of Shakespeare's line, "A good heart is worth gold." I am glad mine is good now, and if the doctors and the Secret Service and my guardians in the press will just permit me to get my exercise, I intend to keep it that way.

I want to thank you very much for beginning the work that I think will ultimately win the hardest fight that we have ever fought. And I would suspect that just as we look back on Lincoln's proclamation a hundred years ago, when he took the chains off the slaves, I would suspect that someday your grandchildren and great, great grandchildren will be looking at this picture made this morning in this beautiful rose garden, all the thorns are inside, and see the leadership of 50 States who are willing to give their talents and their energies and their imaginations, and stay awake at night and roll over and go get a glass of water and come back and think some more on how to get the results that we know are within our reach.

In my judgment there is nothing that you will ever do that will keep your name glorified longer, and that will make your descendants prouder than this unselfish task that you have today undertaken to get rid of the causes of heart and cancer and stroke in this land and around the world. Because what can be more satisfying than to feel that you have preserved not a life, but millions of them, for decades.

I am here to say to you that while we are interested in the food stamp plan, we are interested in Medicare for the aged under social security, we are interested in the civil rights bill that we consider most essential to our leadership in this country and in the world, we are interested in the pay bill that will keep our good civil servants here, we are interested in the immigration bill that will permit families to join each other, and we are interested in the poverty bill that will take our boys out of the pool halls and out of the slums and out of the juvenile delinquency centers of the Nation--we are interested in all of those things.

There is nothing that really offers more and greater hope to all humanity and to preserving humanity than the challenge in the task that you have undertaken. You have among you some of the great doctors, some of the great public servants of our time. Somehow, someway, sometime, you are going to find the answers, and I hope it will be soon.

Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:30 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White House.

The President announced the establishment of the Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke and listed the members at his news conference of March 7 (see Item 211 [6]).

A White House release, dated September 22, announced that the Commission met in Washington at that time for a 2-day meeting. The release stated that Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, Chairman of the Commission, said that the Commission had held some 65 hearings and other meetings, had heard the testimony of nearly 200 witnesses from agencies concerned with the diseases, and had collected and studied hundreds of documents, statements, and other information since its first meeting in April. Dr. DeBakey added that many more meetings would be held before the Commission would be ready to submit its report (see Item 798).

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks at the first Meeting of the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239305

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