“ETHICALLY IMPOSSIBLE” STD Research in Guatemala from 1946-1948 
NAHC had served since at least 1930 to advise the government on both field 
and laboratory research activities of the PHS. 201 In September 1944, CMR 
accepted a proposal by NIH Director Dyer to transfer control of CMR and 
its NRC reviewing committees to PHS. 202 In 1943, OSRD medical research 
contracts began transferring to the PHS grant system. 203 A new system for 
federally funded biomedical research emerged, housed at NIH, in which 
OSRD contracts were converted into PHS grants. 204 The Assistant Chief of 
the Venereal Disease Division, and former VDRL Associate Director, Dr. 
Cassius J. Van Slyke, became chief of the new NIH Research Grants Office. 205 
PHS leadership established a dual-review structure for evaluating funding 
applications, borrowed in part from the war-time structure of OSRD/CMR 
and its advisory NRC committees. 206 Study sections (serving a similar func- 
tion as the NRC committees), composed of independent, usually civilian, 
peer scientists and representatives from the Army, Navy, Veterans Administra- 
tion, and PHS, made recommendations about the applications’ scientific merit 
and an advisory council, also comprised of independent scientists, considered 
policy implications in addition to evaluating questions of scientific merit. 207 
The Surgeon General made final funding decisions. 208 
The first study section 
established under this 
new structure was the 
Syphilis Study Section 
(see Figure 3), formerly 
the Penicillin Panel of 
the NRC Subcommittee 
on Venereal Diseases 
and renamed by Dr. 
Parran in December 
1945. 209 It began work 
in early 1946 and 
reviewed the proposal for research in Guatemala as one of 30 projects consid- 
ered at its first meeting on February 7-8, 1946. 210 Dr. Joseph Moore, from 
Johns Hopkins University and chair of the NRC Subcommittee on Venereal 
Diseases, chaired the group, which included 11 other members. 
Syphilis Study Section, 1947 
From the National Institutes of Health, 
Department of Health and Human Services 
30 
