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REMARKS BY:  DONNA E. SHALALA, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
PLACE: GENERAL MOTORS CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.
DATE: JUNE 10, 1998

Thank you Sam for that wonderful introduction.

On behalf of the entire Clinton administration, I want to say how happy we are that Sam Donaldson is back covering the White House.

Sam, Mike McCurry regrets he couldn't be here tonight to personally tell you how much he missed you while you were away.

But, Mike certainly has you on his mind. He's home nursing another headache.

Sam, I do have a message from Mike. He asked me to assure you that when you travel with the President to China, your bags will get there too - eventually.

Actually Sam, it's good to see that you can still out-yell the entire White House press corps. It's good to see you can still get my friend George Will to shake his head in despair. Most important, it's very good to see your remarkable recovery from melanoma.

Sam, we admire your candor and courage - and are deeply thankful for what you've done to help educate Americans about skin cancer. So stick around and keep us gnashing our teeth for a long, long time.

Sam Donaldson and I are both old enough to remember what is sometimes called The Golden Age of television. Today, we have entered a different kind of golden age. The golden age of biomedical research. I'd like to take a moment to recognize one of the truly outstanding leaders of this golden age - Dr. Richard Klausner, director of the National Cancer Institute. Rick and the incomparable Dr. Harold Varmus are steering The National Cancer Institute, and a gifted army of researchers at NIH toward a goal as majestic, and historic, as the discovery of the New World - the discovery of a cure for cancer.

Together, they're taking our investments in biomedicine - and turning them into lifesaving research.

The signs are everywhere that our investments in biomedicine are paying off. For the first time, overall cancer incidence and deaths are down. New drugs are coming on the market that prevent some breast cancers. The work being done at Boston Children's Hospital is very encouraging. But perhaps the most telling sign is the 20 years of progress we celebrate tonight.

In this room are its some of the earliest - and most daring - pioneers of the golden age of biomedical research. Yet, most Americans do not know who you are - let alone that you are part of a pantheon of greatness that is reshaping the world on a scale comparable to the Age of Exploration and the Industrial Revolution. Dr. Withers, Dr. Cory, Dr. Korsmeyer, Dr. Horvitz - and all of the past recipients of what many call the Nobel Prize for cancer research - are the invisible hands of hope.

You walk among us. And work among us. But your place among us is unique, because you are unlocking the secrets of cancer, and opening doors that have brought us - we pray - to the threshold of a cure.

However, as you know better than anyone does, we are not there yet. To cross that threshold to a cure will take a sustained search - and the tireless support - of government, academic health centers, private research institutions and major corporations.

That's why the President is calling on Congress to approve a historic 50 percent increase over five years in the budget of the National Institutes of Health. That's why the President is calling on Congress to pass comprehensive tobacco legislation this year - to protect children from the lure of tobacco and the shadow of cancer. That's why we're urging teenagers not to be exposed to too much sun. And that's why I want to congratulate and thank General Motors for putting a spotlight on heroes whose work is as complex as a human cell - and as crucial to life as the beat of a human heart.

Louis Pasteur once said, "chance favors only the mind that is prepared."

That is true. Discovery is rarely about luck, and almost always about toil.

But even the prepared mind needs support and encouragement. With money for research. With state of the art facilities. And, of course, with recognition and words of praise for extraordinary - even miraculous - accomplishments. Tonight you will hear many such words. It is a great honor to add mine.

Thank you.