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4 Ford Announces
Pages 21-26

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From page 21...
... This was backed by Sencer's action-memorandum. In between was an OMB attachment labeled "Uncertainties Surrounding a Federal Mass Swine Influenza Immunization Program." Into this Lynn's aides had poured the hardest questions they could think of (or extract from other sources)
From page 22...
... Two of Ford's aides had talked of this, but Mathews was a weak reed in their eyes and anyway, "we thought he'd punted." Besides the President seemed quite content, some even thought him eager, to announce a swine flu program as his own and urge public support of it. He evidently thought then, and still does, that this was his plain duty: "If you want to get 216 million people immunized this requires the imprimatur of the White House." Like Mathews, Cooper, Sencer, Ford may also have had a refreshing sense of doing a direct, uncomplicated, decently heroic deed.
From page 23...
... Frederick Davenport (a noted virologist) , Maurice Hilleman (the respected head of Merck virology labs)
From page 24...
... His respondents saw that and it gratified them but it also puzzled them. Summoned to the White House on short notice, many for the first time, ushered into a large, formal meeting, watching Ford call first on one and then another, most of those we've interviewed took it to be "programmed," a "stage set" and they "players" .
From page 25...
... When NBC ran a straightforward, circumspect account instead, they were relieved. Cochran and Robert Pierpoint of CBS, among others, thereupon proceeded to the question they, as White House correspondents, had to ask: was this political?
From page 26...
... The Cronkite show that night had Pierpoint saying: Some experts seriously question whether it is logistically possible to inoculate two hundred million Americans by next fall. But beyond that, some doctors and public health officials have told CBS News that they believe that such a massive program is premature and unwise, that there is not enough proof of the need for it, and it won't prevent more common types of flu.


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