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The Kate Mulgrew Interview (Page 4 of 4)
An Interview with Kate Mulgrew
Kate Mulgrew:
I do not know. We talked about it
at breakfast this morning. I think it is
fear. It is awfully difficult to
confront your mortality in this life.
It is one thing to know that you are
going to die in a war, die of cancer,
die in childbirth. It is another
thing to know it will take you 10 long
years to die and that, slowly but
surely, you are going to lose everyone
in your family. So we have to
overcome that fear. It is our duty
as a society to harness our energies, to
lend our resources, and come to grips
with the fact that this must be dealt
with now.
Gary Barg:
You speak about the clinical trials.
What is holding us up from producing
appropriate clinical trials?
Kate Mulgrew:
Well, you know as well I know, there is
not enough funding. Why is there
not enough funding? For exactly
the reason I just said; and also because
it is an ugly disease. It is
viewed as an ugly disease. It is
not glamorous. It is not sexy.
There will be a death and it will be
terribly unpleasant, but it is going to
be altogether more unpleasant if it is
done without the dignity it deserves.
So we have to get the funding. We
have to go to Congress. We have to
go to the Hill. We have to go to
one another. I travel around like
this. You have got your book.
You keep doing your thing.
Let us get a little
stirred up now. Enough of
indolence and passive behavior.
Everybody is very interested in their
galas and their luncheons and their
balls, and where is the money? I
need the money for the clinical trials.
We need the money to find this cure.
Gary Barg:
What is the one piece of
advice—if you just had one thing you can
report to the family caregivers—what
would that one nice important piece of
advice be?
Kate Mulgrew:
Whatever else you are doing, I would say
to them, reach down deep and acknowledge
that you are extremely special.
You are one of the exalted ones.
In your exhaustion and in your
occasional moments of despair and when
it looks like nobody else gives a damn,
you have to know, in a sort of mystical
way, that you are indeed an exalted one.
Gary Barg:
Thank you Kate.
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