# Mary Lasker

Source: https://onco.cc/people/mary-lasker/  
OnCo record `mary-lasker` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

She turned the American Cancer Society into a research funder in the 1940s, built the Lasker Awards, and led the lobbying that produced the 1971 National Cancer Act and the modern NCI budget.

## Summary

Mary Lasker (1900-1994) and her husband Albert founded the Lasker Foundation in 1942 and its awards, which have often anticipated the Nobel Prize. She helped reorganise the American Society for the Control of Cancer into the American Cancer Society and pushed it to commit a quarter of its income to research. From the late 1940s she lobbied Congress year after year for the National Institutes of Health, cultivating members and testifying alongside clinicians such as Sidney Farber, whom she recruited as a witness. Her Citizens Committee for the Conquest of Cancer ran the 1969 campaign, including a full-page advertisement telling President Nixon that he could cure cancer, that led to the National Cancer Act signed on 23 December 1971. The act created the modern National Cancer Institute, its cancer centres and its budget, and remains the template for disease-specific advocacy.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-09
- Tags: hero; advocate
- Role: Philanthropist and lobbyist behind the National Cancer Act of 1971
- Specialisms: Research funding; Health policy; Cancer advocacy

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lasker
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lasker
- Lasker Foundation: https://laskerfoundation.org/

## Connected records

- collections: [American Cancer Society (ACS)](https://onco.cc/collections/american-cancer-society/)
- institutions: [Lasker Foundation](https://onco.cc/institutions/lasker-foundation/), [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/)
- people: [Albert Lasker](https://onco.cc/people/albert-lasker/), [Sidney Farber](https://onco.cc/people/sidney-farber/)
- bottlenecks: [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/), [Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-incentive-misalignment/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/mary-lasker.json