The Rise of a Research Empire: NIH, 1930 to 1950

Abstract

Few federal agencies have prospered as greatly in recent years as the National Institutes of Health, the research branch of the U.S. Public Health Service. Every year, with uncommon enthusiasm, Congress approves larger and larger expenditures for the study of human disease. Already NIH has become the hub of an enormous research effort, and its program will probably continue to expand. The agency has grown so rapidly since the end of World War II that the prewar and wartime stages in its development are now almost forgotten. It was during the 1930's that NIH began laying the groundwork for its current research program. Before the end of World War II federal public health officials had formulated the objectives, worked out the basic organizational pattern, and gained the legislative authority for a great postwar medical research effort. Their far-sighted policy, carefully calculated to advance the cause of federally sponsored medical research, made it possible for NIH to become the giant that it is today. Creation of NIHBy 1930 the Public Health Service had achieved a proud record in medical research. Its original research laboratory, established by Joseph J. Kinyoun

Crisis Innovation Policy from World War II to COVID-19

“…Though it had its roots in the Marine Hygienic Laboratory, a bacteriology lab created in 1887 which made significant contributions to vaccine development against infectious diseases in the early twentieth century, the Institute focused on basic studies on chronic diseases like cancer. Before the war, it did not have a broad research funding program (Swain 1962).…”

“…We previously described how during World War II the OSRD's Committee on Medical Research coordinated and funded medical research activities. After the war was over, and as Bush's proposed National Research Foundation faced legislative delays, CMR's open contracts were transferred to NIH and became the foundation of its extramural grants program (Swain 1962, Fox 1987. Buoyed by the wartime demonstration of the value of medical innovation and the returns to government research funding, the NIH grew rapidly in the decades that followed, adding myriad new Institutes focused on specific diseases, organs, professions, and fields of research.…”

Medicine as Science

“…After the war, however, the NIH, which was formal ly established in 1930, had taken over a stock of project contracts from the OSRD. These contracts did not adhere to the institutional distinction between medical schools and university departments, thereby effectively establishing the NIH as a key player in patronage of research in both medical and biological disciplines (Appel 2000: 32, see also Swain 1962Swain : 1235.…”

Edgar Sydenstricker, a pioneer of health economics

“…He pointed out that the staff of the Committee had this function in mind when it proposed to the Committee that $2,000,000 per year (i.e., around 15% of the funds allocated by Congress for the program) should be appropriated for research and personnel to "undertake and encourage the task of testing public health methods" (Sydenstricker 1936b, 11). Unfortunately, while this provision ended up in the Social Security Act passed by Congress in 1935, it required annual appropriations by Congress and the actual amounts allocated were consistently below what had been envisaged (Swain 1962). This, in combination with his sudden death in 1936, meant that Sydenstricker's vision for evidence-based policy formation in US public health did not come to pass.…”