New Horizons in Medical Research

Abstract

From the above it is seen that the U. S. Public Health Service Research Grants program represents a sincere and continuing effort to supply Federal funds for the support of necessary additional research in the fields of medical and related sciences without interposing any degree of government restriction, control, supervision, or regimentation. The program is a scientific one, scientific guidance of which lies wholly in the hands of scientists.

Ethical Evasion or Happenstance and Hubris?

“…A nascent American research funding environment in which investigators were given substantial independence in the design and conduct of individual experiments and trusted to behave with “integrity” seems to have played a major role in allowing the researchers to focus on the data at the expense of the people (pp. 93, 172, n. 205) …”

Reorganizing The National Institutes Of Health

“…The decentralized architecture of the NIH was established long ago with three features: (1) categorical disease institutes; (2) study sections, or expert panels, to review grant proposals, which have varying degrees of independence from the categorical institutes; and (3) intramural research programs that are tied nominally but loosely to their categorical institute home. 8 In many ways, this structure has served to insulate medical science from politics. However, insistent political demands from disease-oriented interest groups, coinciding with the personal interests of legislative and executive branch sponsors, have resulted in the proliferation of new institutes, centers, and program offices attached to the Office of the Director (OD).…”

“Something of an Adventure”: Postwar NIH Research Ethos and the Guatemala STD Experiments

“…39 He shared his vision for the future of research grants in his article "New Horizons in Medical Research," where he declared that the establishment of the DRG signaled the "complete acceptance of a basic tenet of the philosophy upon which the scientific method rests: The integrity and independence of the research worker and his freedom from control, direction, regimentation, and outside interference." 40 Dr. Van Slyke agreed with the National Resources Committee regarding the benefits of scientific latitude and endorsed maximum flexibility for researchers to change the direction of funded research as "bypaths quite often lead to more important findings than do the roads from which they branch." 41 Dr. Van Slyke distributed the article to many academic scientists for their endorsement before publishing it in Science.…”