Mr. McLAURIN. I became interested in this because of a doctor friend of mine who is with the largest drug manufacturing company in the world. He gave up a practice at the age of 28 to go in with this large drug manufacturing company,

At that time he was only bent just about like this; today, about 15 years later, he walks like this. He cannot straighten up at all.

It was in the hope that he would be able to do something about research along that and other lines that he gave up his large personal practice to go into it. He inspired me as a layman in Detroit 3 years ago to become interested in it. He was doing a lot medically, but they did need the lay assistance, and that is why I am interested in it today.

Senator MURRAY. I am glad to hear that story. I was intending to ask how you became interested in it, because I think you are rendering a very valuable service to our country in devoting your time to this, and I thank you very much.

Mr. McLAURIN. Thank you, sir.

Senator MURRAY. Mr. Ralph B. Rogers.

STATEMENT OF RALPH B. ROGERS, PRESIDENT, INDIAN MOTOCYCLE CO., SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

Senator MURRAY. You may be seated, Mr. Rogers, and state your full name and profession or anything about your background you wish to have in the record.

Mr. ROGERS. My name is Ralph B. Rogers, and I am president of the Indian Motocycle Co. at Springfield, Mass.

Senator MURRAY. You may proceed with your statement.

Mr. ROGERS. Gentlemen, I very much appreciate the opportunity to appear today to ask your support for the national arthritis and rheumatism bill.

I should like to take a few minutes of your time to tell you of my own personal experience with one of the diseases which falls within the scope of this bill. The disease I refer to is the worst killer and cripplier of children in the United States today. You know it as rheumatic fever, or rheumatic heart disease.

You and I have read, or have heard, that there are more deaths which result from rheumatic fever than from all the children's illnesses combined. Let me repeat: there are more deaths which result from this form of rheumatism than from all the children's diseases put together. Perhaps even worse, this disease leaves most of its victims, and I am talking now of the victims who live, with a heart impairment which limits, and often destroys, the boy's or girl's usefulness in later life.

How many times do you pick up a newspaper and see where someone in his 20's, 30's or 40's, died from heart disease? How many times have we said, "Isn't it too bad such a promising young man or young woman had to die at such an early age?" What you did not know, and perhaps did not suspect, when you read that obituary was that that death was due in most cases to an attack of rheumatic fever during childhood.

While rheumatic fever is known as a children's disease, it can and does strike adults. Now I want to tell you my story. In the winter of 1943, while I was working every day and every night to see that my

companies met the requirements for Diesel engines, aircraft landing ding gears, and hundreds of other vital components for our war machine, I contracted a streptococcal sore throat. A few weeks after this sore throat, I came down with rheumatic fever. For nine solid months I never set foot outside the hospital bed. For 4 months it was doubtful whether I would live. I was one of the lucky ones. I did live and I made a full recovery, although it took me 5 months to learn how to walk following the 9-month siege.

What happened to me in itself is not important, but what I found out during those 14 months is vitally important to you and to every American.

Picture yourself in my place. Here was a typical American who started with absolutely nothing, was lucky enough to live in this country so that, despite lack of money, had been able to get a good education, even though it meant working in the daytime and going to school at night. Here was the typical American story of opportunity available to a boy who was willing to work his way up from nothing and now, at the peak of his usefulness, the best brains of the American medical profession told him:

"Mr. Rogers, we don't know what rheumatic fever really is. We don't know what causes rheumatic fever, and we don't know how to cure it. There is absolutely nothing which we can do for you. You are financially able to buy for yourself the best nursing care and you may be fortunate enough to live."

Gentlemen, those words are awfully tough to take when you are suffering excruciating pain. They are even tougher to take when you have battled for a living all your life and you have come to the conclusion that there is no obstacle which cannot be surmounted.

Yet, in those days of this painful experience, the facts were as the doctors stated. Here was the worst crippler and killer of American youth-and no way known to prevent it, alleviate it, or cure it.

I was fortunate in more ways than one. Not only did I survive, but I was financially in a position to get together every scrap of information on this rheumatic killer and, as a layman, study that information.

I was astonished to find that in the group of diseases which fall under the heading of arthritis and rheumatism-and I now quote statistics from the United States Public Health Office, its related offices and the United States Department of Labor-that we here in the United States, even discounting the pain, agony, and misery suffered by the victims and by the parents and friends of these victims, that despite all this agony, we actually lose the services and the talents and the skills of 7,000,000 Americans.

Arthritis and rheumatism cost our factories, plants, offices, 97,200,000 lost workdays in the year 1947 alone. These figures are staggering. You know how much time and attention we give to the consideration of labor legislation because of the losses resulting from strikes, lockouts, or other labor disputes. Yet here are 97,200,000 lost working days, or almost three-quarters of a billion lost working hours resulting from these diseases.

In terms of dollars and cents, the minimum cost estimate of these lost days or production is one-half a billion dollars. Add to this the $130,000,000 paid by taxpayers in the form of relief allowances for sufferers of this disease and more than $100,000,000 spent personally

and institutionally for its medical care, and the minimum figures total nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars.

If you will excuse my levity, I do not think it inappropriate to comment at this point that the expenditure of $730,000,000 isn't peanuts even today.

In typical American fashion, I promised myself that I would do something personally to put an end to such ridiculous answers as the medical profession was able in honesty to give to me. I determined that I should live to see the day when the medical profession could honestly say: "We know now what causes rheumatic fever and how to prevent it. We know now how to diagnose it early enough so that we may be able to prevent crippling hearts.

In 1944, with the help of a group of doctors headed by Dr. Arthur C. DeGraff of the New York University School of Medicine-then and now one of the leading authorities on rheumatic fever-we undertook research into these unknowns. With the help of the New York University School of Medicine, who used the money we donated for fellowships and with the facilities of their research laboratories and information available at Bellevue Hospital in New York, we started research into the causes of rheumatic fever. A liaison was created with the Irvington House at Irvington, N. Y., which is convalescent home taking care of 100 children each year who are stricken with rheumatic fever and whose families have no means to care for them. Our biological research is done at Irvington House. The doctors and the medical care are all provided by our private resources and the cooperation of a few.

With the budget of approximately $50,000 per year, plus the donated time of some of the finest doctors in the United States, and the donated facilities of the New York University School of Medicine and the Irvington House, which facilities would probably cost us $3,000,000 to create, you may be interested in the accomplishments in the past 4 years: first, we know now what causes rheumatic fever and we know now how to prevent recurrences of rheumatic fever. We know now a great deal more than has been hitherto known, but there is much more which will have to be done before we can with certainty prevent the original onset before we can with certainty diagnose this disease in its earliest stages, and before we can find a cure.

The point of recounting what we have been able to do privately is to show you that if we have been able to do this much, because we care, and because of the efforts of people who care and with a small amount of money, that much more can be done if you gentlemen will see to it that the proposed arthritis and rheumatism bill is passed and that the $7,000,000 which is requested for work in this field-which $7,000,000, I remind you, is less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the economic losses sustained by us in the United States each year is made available for the purposes envisioned in the arthritis and rheumatism bill.

I don't have to remind you gentlemen that these 7,000,000 Americans afflicted with arthritis and rheumatism can buy less, pay less taxes, and contribute less to the maintenance of himself, his family, and his country. The $7,000,000, looking at it coldly, is a good investment as there can be no question that the increased earning powers of 7,000,000 sufferers would result in more than $1 per person which they could pay in Federal income taxes alone.

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On the other hand, neither you nor I can look at this matter that coldly. After all, the diseases of arthritis and rheumatism are not something which can be regarded as the ailment of some nice old lady down the street. These diseases hit more Americans than cancer, heart disease, tuberculosis, and diabetes combined. They cripple our children and they cripple and kill our young men and our young women in their productive periods between the ages of 20 and 40and let none of us discount the productive ability and the brain power of the arthritis victims even after the 40 years mark is reached.

Do you realize, gentlemen, that in this entire Nation today only 200 free hospital beds are available for sufferers of arthritis and rheumatism? Do you know that your own statistics prove that only 1 percent of rheumatism patients get hospital care and only one of three victims is ever treated by a doctor privately or institutionally? None of us here in the United States have the right to tell these sick people, "We are sorry, your illness is one of those unfortunate inevitabilities."

I asked for the privilege to come here today not only to tell you the story I have related and to give you my layman's opinion, but I asked for that privilege because it seemed unbelievable that you and I could read page after page of our tremendous national budget and then realize that the total national contribution of private, institutional, and Federal agencies to combat arthritis and rheumatism is only $200,000 per year.

Contrast this sum with the other congressional allocations with which you are familiar. We spend $200,000 per year for our fight against arthritis and rheumatism while Congress allocated $29,866,000 for research and control of animal and plant disease in the year 1947. I have no quarrel with the $29,866,000 if it is spent wisely for research and control of animal and plant disease in the United States, but certainly, gentlemen, 7,000,000 stricken Americans have a right to expect consideration from their Congress for more than $200,000 if that Congress can see its way clear to appropriate $29,866,000 for research and control of animal and plant disease. Those 7,000,000 Americans cannot appreciate, because of their suffering, all the interesting information concerning chlorophyll in plants and degenerative changes in animals. Those 7,000,000 Americans, in their agony and suffering, cannot understand why their problems and the problems of the million Americans who are subject and will be stricken today and tomorrow, is less important than their Nation's interest in the research and control of animal and plant diseases.

As you know, it is the purpose of the national arthritis and rheumatism bill to establish a National Arthritis and Rheumatism Institute. Its primary objective is the establishment of grants-in-aid for medical research to qualified institutions.

It represents the first substantial effort to establish the facts to understand, prevent, and cure these crippling diseases. The medical profession regards this work as a "must." I feel confident you and I, as layman, will agree that it is a "must."

Senator MURRAY. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. I think you are entitled to be complimented for the effort you have put into this statement of yours. You must have given a great deal of time and study to this job which confronts us.

Mr. ROGERS. I have, sir, for the past 5 years.

Senator MURRAY. Does the American Medical Association carry on any campaign for a program of this kind?

Mr. ROGERS. When I become interested in this problem about 6 years ago, there was no campaign that was carried on in this field by the American Medical Association or by any other really strong body. There were small attempts being made by local people who had a personal interest to do something, but at that particular time when I made my first study, there was actually not $20,000 a year available for research in either arthritis, rheumatism, or heart disease all combined.

Now, since that time there has been a great deal of effort mainly due to the work that a few people and myself have done to put something behind this work, and what we have done and what I have recounted here was done absolutely privately, no public money raised at all, we did it ourselves, and we have made some progress, and there is an attempt being made and has been made the last couple of years to raise some money publicly by other people-I am a director in one of the foundations that is trying to do this work-but this work needs a real push, and this is the way to get that real push, in my opinion.

Senator MURRAY. It seems to me that in view of the progress that has been made with just the slight effort that has so far been given, that with the setting up of an institution of this kind, in a very short time there would be considerable progress in mastering and finding the cause and the relief for the disease.

Mr. ROGERS. I have no question that if this job is done, we will all live to see the wiping out of this scourge. I have no question about it. Senator MURRAY. I think there is hardly one person in the country who does not have some relative or very close friend affected by this dread disease, and I think the committee that is studying this problem is going to be very sympathetic to your statement and to the proposed move that you are sponsoring.

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you very much.

Senator MURRAY. The next witness will be Frank Mandel.

STATEMENT OF FRANK E. MANDEL, CHICAGO, ILL.

Senator MURRAY. Give your full name and address.
Mr. MANDEL. Frank E. Mandel.

the department-store business.

Senator MURRAY. Mandel Bros.?
Mr. MANDEL. That is right, sir.

I am from Chicago and I am in

Senator MURRAY. I have been in the store many times. It is a nice store, too. You may proceed with your testimony, Mr. Mandel. Mr. MANDEL. This committee is in session to hear facts relative to the National Arthritis and Rheumatism Act.

I am here to speak in favor of the passage of this legislation. Once the Members of Congress have been informed as to the facts involved, I am sure that support for the Arthritis and Rheumatism Act will be overwhelming.

ment.

Rheumatic disease cripples more of our people than any other ailOne out of every twenty Americans suffers from it. Of the 7,000,000 people in this country who are afflicted with some form of rheumatism, about a million are disabled to some degree.