Nixon, Richardson & Egeberg on US-Soviet health research agreement

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How's it down here?

Well, I thought we, uh, thought that, uh, it's a special occasion to watch a gentleman's Russian, uh, U.S. holiday.

I don't know if it's still going on.

Well, okay.

I know.

But now you say it.

I know you were doing some things.

But I was not doing it too much.

And we, of course, do these things at the highest level.

And someone has got to set it up so that we can do it and then follow through.

And it's very responsive to court.

No, I think we've got it.

They may have some.

But the Chinese, the Russians, all of them, it's great.

It just helps in the foreign policy field.

It helps in the Russian.

But it helps, and this is what our main concern is, it helps the whole American people.

Don't you find that?

Well, absolutely.

We're talking to Russian doctors and all that sort of thing.

You just haven't had the total support I've learned to work on.

Well, I felt that.

Thank you.

The Secretary has been extremely supportive, and I know that you initiated it and have been very much interested in it.

But I'm delighted with the way people are interested in it in this country.

What do you find?

Well, finally, they say,

And that gives you a chance to say that you are trying to get us into a base of discussion rather than confrontation.

It gives an opportunity to say many things now.

And they seem, well, I suppose, widely divided in being happiest about either Russia or about China.

But they're all happy about both of them.

And they often ask about other countries.

I did ask to be invited to a Warsaw Pact meeting.

the deputy minister of health to our CCMS people and he asked about the program and he said I don't like NATO and I said I don't like Warsaw Pact how about inviting me there anyhow they are very friendly and in Russia the USSR the professionals with whom we spoke were very emotional about wanting to keep communications open

He's an amazing man.

He's been through the long march and all the rest.

He's an amazing man.

Heart and medicine generally.

Right.

other areas.

They, you see obviously they're, the health insurance is very important, and very personally they bring these things up, and of course the health agreement got a good play here, because the arms thing was considered so much more important, not as much as that, but it strikes you as possibly important.

Another line that has occurred to me that you might follow, which we developed, and David, uh, and David was in here, I'll just sign some, some tenure with her.

Uh,

First of all, as you well know, we have been exchanging information in the Soviet and various fields for many years.

But there's been a very significant change in terms of our relationships with the Soviet science, technology, and health fields, as well as space and the rest.

The most graphic demonstration of the change is the space shuttle,

rather than exchanging information, we are cooperating and are going together.

In other words, we will go to the moon together, and that's when we go to space together.

Now, as David pointed out, when he signed this six point agreement on technical information, and the scientific people, he said, this, he said, we, he said, this is the first, he said, we have had exchange of information before, but at arm's length, where our scientists and engineers go their own way,

their science and engineers go there with them.

He said, what is different about this is that now, instead of just exchanging information, we are going to cooperate in science and engineering and Soviet and American, but we're side by side in developing science.

And I think in the health field, you might say that we, throughout this thing, we started with the confrontation, and then we turned to negotiation, and finally now we're in the phase of cooperation and confrontation

And then we had a negotiation and exchange at arm's length where we each business the other.

But then what you're trying to do now is to have cooperation where in Idaho this would work out where a team of American and Soviet doctors or American, Polish, or the Hungarians are helping people too.

There's none of them who are working on it.

Now in the health field, it seems to me that you could sort of develop that to understand that people like both groups together.

Well, you know, we've already sent our first team of five outstanding cancer specialists to the OSSRC.

And they have, they went over there for the specific purpose of establishing a common ground for the research and then there'd be exchange.

You know, we appeared before Symington, Congressman Symington's committee.

And they were very happy.

They were particularly happy to say, well, are you doing anything about it?

And we said, yes, exactly, which was two days later.

Our first group is going over.

Next week, a Russian group is

And they were very happy about this.

So the Minister of Health arrived.

Roger was in the eating room.

He arrived in New York on Sunday.

He's arriving here today.

Roger's giving lunch for him.

I'm going to give you dinner for him at Blair House.

Any chance of bringing him home?

The Minister of Health?

Yes.

He's also a part of our cabinet now.

I mean, part of their, I think you're right, Jeff.

They have to be pretty, basically, sort of a courtesy sort of thing because we have such a problem.

Well, he said this is a visit of the state and not a technical visit.

He said that.

He hasn't said that, right?

Yes.

I mean, it would take a lot of the class.

I guess we have to, Henry, or Al, maybe you can tell me some questions about whether you should

Because of the mental health commitments of Soviet dissidents primarily.

What mental health?

They were committed to mental hospitals.

Yeah.

Soviet, prominent Soviet dissidents.

Since he has a health system, they all have some concern that he would be connected with this in some way or another.

From the point of view of the... Oh, they are great.

Mental health.

You have several very common cases that happen.

It has turned into nothing.

Yeah, I think so.

I can't remember the names of the individuals concerned, and this man's name has been identified with the responsibility for it.

Well, let me suggest this.

I'll get, uh, you know, uh, Haynes, uh, very well.

All right, fine.

I can take 10 or 15 minutes.

I mean, Rayford, we can have a debrief so that I don't get...

you know, subject of the mental health, I mean, the health of Bolivia or Congo.

Well, I spoke of the fact that I had no objection to whatever you're doing, unless that problem, that had occurred to me.

Well, my only view is that, oh, given the degree of promise attached to cooperation in cancer in other areas, and given your identification with the Uyghur dynasty in Moscow,

that for him to go back, not anything at all could be a little bit, yeah.

But I'll talk to him.

I'll be checking that out.

Well, listen.

Why don't you talk to him?

I have the time.

I'm not concerned about the day.

It doesn't bother me.

I don't think the Irish person's going to, but maybe a few writers who pick it up do.

You know when I scored in California, we do the same thing.

Five times as many

to insane institutions in Northern California as in Southern California.

Yeah, in your own country, you've got a tremendous difference here.

It was just a good way of taking care of older people, and, oh, not a good way, but they did it.

You cannot do it with a small company.

Well, I'll be back.

I think we can handle that.

Yes, sir.

I wanted to touch on one thing.

But anyway, the CCMS, HealthShare, activities, and Roger, and Roger has actually almost single-handedly tried to tell that it's been, it legally is ever, but has kept it a lie.

So, the CCMS, on undertaking any activities, he was healthy.

He took a tour last fall, visiting all the health ministers in all the principal natal countries.

Yes, this is a very exciting thing that just started.

All right.

But anybody who knows the United Nations, the WHO, knows it takes about eight years to get something through.

And most of them are brown and black, plus our representatives from here and the United Kingdom and so forth, are public health people, whom I sometimes suspect, kind of wish that they'd ever

health care, and those things that are our problem.

So this is a good thing for that CCMS, and we've got 500 projects going down, one on automation of laboratory procedures, one on automation of triage of applications, which is very necessary in this country now.

And Europe is getting excited about emergency care.

We have a very good thing going in the

San Diego, and when they're over here, when they're meeting to see our multi-faith triage, most of them are going down to San Diego to see our triage.

I heard Rodney was there for six months.

What came up, I think, at the time, it means selection, not a civil war.

You have two wounded men.

You may save his life if you can have eight hours with him.

The other, you can put him back into action if you take care of his finger.

So you take care of the fingers and the little things and let this person get under the line in which he probably will die.

The same thing applies to civil life, but mostly protection of a doctor.

One very recent statistic, it used to be that 80% of people who saw a doctor when they had to put the money on the barrel head had something wrong with them when they went to see the doctor.

Yeah.

Now only 20%.

The other 80% comes partly for the ride, partly because they think it would be interesting.

But this three-eyed business, without using a doctor, can divide them into, well, we'll get lectures on how to stay well.

The worried well, we're all wondering about that.

And then the early sick and the sick.

And this becomes important to France, to Germany,

Germany is apparently passing, passed a law that everybody's going to have an examination every year.

But you can't do it with physicians.

And this is a good way of getting you used to it.

Well, we have, they take a history themselves.

And then you can have a nurse take blood for 20 tests, which can be done by a T-shirt or a shirt.

And then the nurse can take the blood, she can take the x-rays, and the blood pressure can't pass.

And frankly, if you've got a medical history, I mean, you can get all the same questions to doctors and all that.

And then this is computerized.

Yeah.

And they've got to work it out.

Oh, they've got to catch it out.

Sure.

Whether they're in detail or not.

Sure.

It isn't all that mysterious.

Let me suggest this, that what you're talking, certainly, of course, is to keep complete support for the CCMS, the NATO operation, to show that we can also indicate, in my opinion, the Soviet Union.

in our very great interest to express at the highest level that this is an area that is totally non-controversial.

I mean, there may be different approaches, but it's non-controversial that this is an area where people want to work together and that it's the common enemy of disease is something that we're going to have to fight and we're going to have to learn from the other.

I mean, we've been impressed, for example, I wouldn't say the anarchist is an anarchist.

and they're interested in some of the things they asked me about some of the things we were doing.

Take, for example, I think you could mention our cancer issue.

You might even say that I found questions raised in both sessions in China about our cancer issue and what we were doing.

And I, of course, am going to share that information.

And also, the other point that I would make is that it's a very interesting point that the, that,

We can never say that scientific genius or medical genius reposes in any one country or any one race that the man or woman who may find the answer to cancer may be living in a

in Austria, you might be in the United States, you might be in Latin America, who knows.

But the main thing is that what we have to do is to find ways not only for exchanging information but for cooperation so that we can have the best brains in the world sharing information and attacking these various things.

Not for the purpose of gaining a national game in terms of a national conquest, but in terms of an international challenge.

Of course, it's the attitude everybody agrees with.

Well, we don't care.

We love to have some Russian fun.

There's probably a simple answer somewhere down the line.

But if there is, who do we care?

We just hope to God somebody does, don't we?

Yes, I don't care what country.

This might be something we will do.

have in view because San Diego Emergency Care Project is one of five emergency care centers which are being developed as models now and it's the kind of thing that might be a good take along around October, middle of October.

We would combine a visit to the emergency care center with a

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah.

is given full recognition of the administration cooperating with your league, following your lead with Whitney Young.

And in general, I think it listed pretty good.

One point that I wanted to make to you is that I don't know whether you might ask all of the judges what their views are on some of the contentious polling, an area where we're coming up with seemingly well-known self-management on this.

I'm sure you've heard about it.

It's a very recent poll.

A very recent poll.

I was surprised, frankly, and I had plenty of time with people to talk about an economic meeting yesterday, and he just happened to raise this subject, and I said, well, somebody's about to answer, and I said, I don't know, but I said, it could very well be what two of your speeches, but just, I just thought, I just went on, but seriously, I think you ought to know that I was, I was surprised, and I don't know what was the reason for getting those figures yesterday.

All right, well, thank you, thank you.

Nixon, Richardson & Egeberg on US-Soviet health research agreement

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on August 1, 1972

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