102 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



Initiation and Implementation of the Research Program 



The assignment of CMR was to utilize the scientific resources of the 

 country for medical research. The necessity for research in military medi- 

 cine may, at first glance, seem less real than that in the weapons of war- 

 fare assigned to NDRC. Radar, the proximity fuze, and the atomic bomb 

 are new and must be developed to be used. But the subjects of military 

 medicine are the subjects of civilian medicine. Pneumonia is not new, nor 

 malaria, nor burns, nor wounds, nor shock. Medicine has concerned itself 

 with their physiology and treatment for years. To the extent that this is 

 true, the role of CMR was relatively simple. It is considerably less than a 

 half truth. The shift in emphasis and even in direction was enormous. 

 Many subjects of minor importance in peacetime become of controlling 

 importance in war. Some subjects are born of war. Tropical medicine had 

 been considered of rather academic interest to the health of the United 

 States. Even the machine age had not adapted our younger generation to 

 flying at 40,000 feet or diving at 400 miles an hour. The necessity of medi- 

 cal research had been demonstrated by the expressed and visible needs of 

 the Services. The Committee on Medical Research was established to resolve 

 this necessity. 



The Committee's aims were to recognize the problems of military impor- 

 tance, to see that work upon them was undertaken by competent investi- 

 gators in laboratories throughout the country, to support the investiga- 

 tions by Federal funds. In accomplishing the first of these aims, the 

 Committee relied upon the personnel of the NRC committees with their 

 Liaison Officers and upon its own staff. No list was ever published of sub- 

 jects upon which the Committee wished investigations to be conducted; 

 in classified fields such a list could only have been written in unprofitably 

 vague terms; in unclassified fields the subjects seemed too obvious to re- 

 quire statement. During the first months of its existence, the Committee 

 utilized the proposals which the NRC committees had formulated. There- 

 after it relied upon laboratories, informed of the requirements by the NRC 

 committees and its own staff, to initiate proposals. When these proposals 

 were not initiated and when important subjects for investigation were 

 neglected or under insufficient study, the Committee requested the per- 

 sonnel whom it regarded as most suitable for their performance to un- 

 dertake them. 



The investigations were usually implemented by contracts which in- 

 volved their full support by Federal funds. Occasionally these contracts 

 supplied only "token" funds. In certain fields CMR was able to "encourage" 

 research without any formal contractual relationship or with contracts de- 

 signed only to cover some particular point. These several arrangements will 



