Politically Connected National Institutes of Heath (NIH)

National Institutes of Health (NIH) was earmarked for approximately $10 billion dollars in the Stimulus Plan. A report was prepared by Jay Heflin and Vicki Needham of the CongressNow Staff outlining updates and the progress of the bill on February 11, 2009. The report was distributed to the NIH staff by the Office of Legislative Policy and Analysis, National Institutes of Health, Building 1, Room 244, 1 Center Drive, MSC 0160, Bethesda, MD 20892-0160.

How did National Institutes of Heath (NIH) become so politically connected? Today NIH has 27 institutes and centers, but in the beginning there was the Marine Hospital Service established 1798. According to the marinehospital.org, the seal of the Marine Hospital Service honors its founding by President John Adams in 1798 and its conversion to the Public Health Service in 1871. All classifications of river workers were eligible for treatment. Every mariner, including pilots, captains, cooks, pursers, engineers, stevedores, roustabouts and deckhands, were eligible for treatment and care. An amending act of March 2, 1799 extended benefits of the Marine Hospital Service to officers and men of the U.S. Navy. The admission of foreign seamen to Marine hospitals on a reimbursable basis was authorized on May 3, 1802. It is estimated that one-third of the patients were African-Americans. According to funding records under the Department of the Treasury, one clerk in the Treasury Department collected twenty cents per month from the wages of each seaman to cover costs at a series of contract hospitals. [http://www.marinehospital.org/past.htm]

According to NIH History page, in 1836 The Library of the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army was established, which is now the present National Library of Medicine. In the 1880s, the Marine Hospital Service(MHS) had been charged by Congress with examining passengers on arriving ships for clinical signs of infectious diseases, especially for the dreaded diseases cholera and yellow fever, in order to prevent epidemics. The MHS bacteriological laboratory, known as the Laboratory of Hygiene, was established at the Marine Hospital, Staten Island, NY. In 1887 year, they authorized Joseph J. Kinyoun, a young MHS physician trained in the new bacteriological methods, to set up a one-room laboratory in the Marine Hospital at Stapleton, Staten Island, New York. The laboratory transferred to the Butler Building, Service Headquarters, Washington, D.C., in June 1891 as the Hygienic Laboratory. The year before in 1890, Congress gave the Marine Hospital Service interstate quarantine authority on March 27. A new Quarantine Act, passed February 15, strengthened the Quarantine Act of 1878, and repealed the act establishing the National Board of Health in 1893. The laboratory was made a component research unit of the Division of Scientific Research, established September 1901, and given statutory recognition by the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service Act (32 Stat. 712), July 1, 1902.

According to a 1981 New York Times article, the public health hospital, situated on 24 acres overlooking the Narrows at Bay Street and Vanderbilt Avenue, opened 150 years ago to treat merchant seamen. It is now a community facility, caring in large part for Staten Island's indigent patients. St. Vincent's Medical Center of Richmond, took control of the hospital in 1981. The 407-bed public health hospital in Staten Island's Clifton section was converted to a 204-bed community hospital under St. Vincent's auspices.

The pre-uniformed Public Health Service commissioned corps was authorized on January 4, 1899. That August the commissioned corps established by law the policy of a mobile corps subject to duty anywhere upon assignment. The name Public Health and Marine Hospital Service was changed to Public Health Service (PHS) on August 14, 1912 and the research program was expanded to include other-than-communicable diseases field investigations, navigable stream pollution, and information dissemination. In 1922 The Library of the Office of the Surgeon General (Army) was renamed the Army Medical Library that January.

On August 10, 1935, Mr. and Mrs. Luke I. Wilson made a gift of 45 acres of their estate "Tree Tops" for use of the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, MD. Mrs. Luke I. Wilson made a second gift of 10.7 acres, to NIH on May 28,1938. The cornerstone for Building 1 was laid June 30. Congress approved construction of new, larger laboratory facilities, and NIH moved to Bethesda, MD., in July. Mrs. Luke I. Wilson made a third gift, 14.4 acres of land, to NIH on September 30, 1938. Mrs. Luke I. Wilson made a fourth gift, 11.6 acres of land, to NIH on September 27, 1940. A final gift of land was made by Mrs. Luke I. Wilson on March 17, 1942 bringing the total to 92 acres. This was the nucleus of the present 310.4-acre reservation. Additional land was acquired through a series of purchases. The purchase of 115.8 acres from the Town & Country Golf Club, Inc., for $600,000 was concluded February 11, 1949. The purchase of 47.9 acres of land from Mr. and Mrs. G. Freeland Peter for $505,000 was concluded on February 14. The purchase of 50.2 acres of land from the Sisters of the Visitation for $173,058 was concluded on June 28, 1949. In today's real estate market, homes in Bethesda, MD range from $800,000.00 to $1,124,100.00 approximately according to Bethesda Neighborhoods and Neighborhoods Statistics (MD). NIH seats on prime real estate. The NIH has over 230 acres of lawn, 180 acres of pasture, 215 acres of forest, and nearly 5 acres of ponds. Much of the Bethesda campus' 310 acres are like a park, with 705 shrub beds comprising 20 acres. The campus has over 7,000 trees (140 species), 67 birdhouses in Bethesda.

With the reorganization of the National Institute of Health into eight divisions, the biologics control program, previously the responsibility of the Division of Pathology and Bacteriology, NIH, was assigned to a newly established Division of Biologics Control (redesignated Biologics Control Laboratory, 1944).

Under a Reorganization Act dated April 3, 1939 the PHS was transferred from the Treasury Department to the Federal Security Agency. Predecessor Agencies In the Department of the Treasury:
1.
Laboratory of Hygiene, Marine Hospital Service (MHS, 1887-91)
2.
Hygienic Laboratory, MHS (1891-1901)
3.
Hygienic Laboratory, Division of Scientific Research (DSR), MHS (1901-2)
4.
Hygienic Laboratory, DSR, Public Health and Marine Hospital Service (1902-12)
5.
Hygienic Laboratory, DSR, Public Health Service (PHS, 1912-30)
6.
National Institute of Health, DSR, PHS (1930-37)
7.
National Institute of Health, PHS (1937-39)

National Institutes of Health was given bureau status by PHS Reorganization Order No. 1, December 20, 1943, implementing the Public Health Service Act (57 Stat. 587), November 11, 1943. National Institute of Health redesignated National Institutes of Health(plural) in 1948. A chronology of events/history of The Nation Institutes of Health can be found at http://www.nih.gov/about/almanac/historical/chronology_of_events.htm.

The following link (http://www.nih.gov/icd/index.html) takes you to a webpage providing information and more links on the 27 institutes and centers. The links gives the date the institute was formed and extensive information on its function. According to a March 2008 press release, Congress renamed the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health in honor of Eunice Kennedy Shriver for her essential contribution to the institute's founding. The institute established in 1963 is now called the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

Rep. John E. Fogarty (D-R.I.) died Jan. 10, 1967. President Lyndon Johnson issued an Executive Order establishing the John E. Fogarty International Center for Advanced Study in the Health Sciences at the National Institutes of Health in his memory. Rep. Fogarty served 20 years as chairman of the House subcommittee that funded what is now Health and Human Services. According to the press release marking the 40th anniversary of the institute, the power of appropriators was so great and Fogarty's likeability so wide that he single-handedly raised the NIH budget from $37 million to $1.24 billion during his chairmanship.

NIH's budget page (http://www.nih.gov/about/budget.htm) outlines the $29 billion used annually for medical research in the form of grants. The link for Budget Statements-testimony by the NIH Director and Institutes and Center Directors is broken. http://www.nih.gov/about/almanac/appropriations/index.htm links to the NIH Almanac - Appropriations from 1935 to 2007. Most of the other links to more information on NIH budget are broken with a redirect to www.nih.gov. [http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/443.html].