ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) to oversee the work of two parallel committees, one devoted to weapons research, the other to medical research. The need for a Committee on Medical Research (CMR) had been apparent for well over a year. Over the course of World War II the CMR recommended some 600 research proposals, many of them involving human subjects, to the OSRD for funding. The work of the CMR was so important that it supplied not only the organizational model but the intellectual justification for creating in the postwar period the National Institutes of Health. The health problems that confronted American soldiers and threatened to undermine their combat efficiency were obvious to the CMR staff, who sought quick, effective solutions. The CMR leaders hoped that further research would establish an effective dosage with fewer side effects or that researchers might uncover new and less toxic therapeutic agents.
