The origins of the National Eye Institute 1933-1968. The Fifth Charles B. Snyder Lecture

Abstract

Many organizations and individuals prompted the authorization of the National Eye Institute by the United States Congress. The United States Marine Hospital and Public Health Service established a Laboratory of Hygiene in 1887, which became the research center of the National Institute of Health in 1930. The Albert D. and Mary Lasker Medical Foundation was mainly responsible for the 1945 conversion of the American Society for the Control of Cancer to the American Cancer Society, dedicated to medical research. Mildred Weisenfeld, a patient with retinitis pigmentosa, founded The Fight for Sight! in 1946 to provide funds for eye research. The Laskers invited Miss Weisenfeld to testify in support of a National Institute of Neurology, and her appeal was so persuasive that it emerged as the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness. Congressman John Fogarty and Senator Lister Hill directed the attention of the Congress and the public to the need for the Federal support of medical research. In 1960 Jules Stein, the legendary founder of the Music Corporation of America (MCA), established a new philanthropy, Research to Prevent Blindness, which provided skilled leadership in detailing the need for research in blinding disease and obtaining Congressional and Presidential approval of a new institute. The Committee for Research in Ophthalmology and Blindness was instrumental in bringing the groups interested in the welfare of the blind into harmony with groups concerned with medical research in blinding disease. The Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology was the first medical society to support the need for a National Eye Institute. The National Eye Institute was formally approved 8 August 1968 and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1993.