29 



Brookhaven National Laboratory. A small amount of research was 

 undertaken for the AEC within the laboratories of other Federal 

 agencies. The nuclear fission research undertaken by the Manhat- 

 tan Project was subsumed by the AEC, and the Commission quickly 

 became one of the leading Government scientific agencies. Its ex- 

 tensive program of research support and graduate fellowships fo- 

 cused primarily on the field of physics. In order to provide the AEC 

 with scientific and technical advice, a General Advisory Committee 

 (GAC) was established by statute and staffed with eminent scientif- 

 ic and technical leaders who had had extensive experience in the 

 major wartime projects. Former Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory 

 director J. Robert Oppenheimer was elected chairman of the GAC. 

 The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy was established concur- 

 rently with the AEC in 1946. 13 The committee consisted of eight- 

 een members, nine from the Senate and nine from the House of 

 Representatives. The chairmanship was to rotate between the 

 House and Senate every two years. Several precedents existed for 

 the creation of joint committees, such as those on taxation, print- 

 ing, and the economic report; however, these earlier joint commit- 

 tees did not have legislative authority. This joint committee was, 

 instead, established as the legislative committee for referral of all 

 bills dealing with the AEC or atomic energy in general. It could in- 

 troduce its own bills in either house. It also maintained investiga- 

 tive and informational responsibilities, which it pursued primarily 

 through hearings. Finally, its policymaking role left it with the 

 duty of making recommendations to Congress. 



THE NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH 



During World War II, the Committee on Medical Research 

 within the OSRD coordinated the Government's sponsorship of 

 medical research, and did so with great success. Perhaps the most 

 important medical advance of this period was the development of 

 penicillin. With the promise of future medical research high in 

 many areas, Congress was anxious to further such work. The cen- 

 tralized national research foundation proposed by Vannevar Bush 

 would have included biomedical research, as did the OSRD. Yet 

 without such a foundation in place, coordination of research had to 

 take place elsewhere. Seeing the opportunity at hand, the Public 

 Health Service moved in, assuming these responsibilities within its 

 research branch, the National Institute of Health (NIH). 14 



The NIH had been conducting medical research in its own lab- 

 oratories since its founding in 1930. In 1945, it took over the re- 

 search contracts that had been administered during the war by the 

 OSRD's Committee on Medical Research. Although the NIH contin- 



1 3 For an appraisal of the early years of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, see Morgan 

 Thomas, Atomic Energy and Congress (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956); and Clin- 

 ton P. Anderson and James T. Ramey, "Congress and Research: Experience in Atomic Research 

 and Development," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 327 (Janu- 

 ary 1960), 85-94. 



14 See Donald C. Swain, "The Rise of a Research Empire: NIH, 1930 to 1950," Science, 138 

 i December 14, 1962), 1233-1237; and Stephen P. Strickland, Politics, Science, and Dread Disease: 

 A Short History of United States Medical Research Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University 

 Press, 1972). The passage of the National Heart Act in June 1948 created the National Heart 

 Institute and changed the name of the National Institute of Health to the National Institutes of 

 Health. 



