[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 136 (Friday, October 4, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H6238]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 FUNDING NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. McDermott) for 4\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, as we have this debate over opening the 
government, I want to talk about an agency that people are not thinking 
about.
  The National Institutes of Health started in 1887 in one room, the 
Public Health Service Hospital in Staten Island, New York. It was 
modeled on something that the Germans had been doing for a number of 
years that was called the Laboratory of Hygiene.
  In 1891, it came to D.C.
  In 1901, they built the first building. The appropriation was 
$35,000. It was for the investigation of infectious and contagious 
diseases.
  In 1912 in St. Louis, 12 kids died when they got a diphtheria vaccine 
that was contaminated with tetanus. At that point, they decided they 
would pass the Biological Control Act, and that was given to the 
Institutes of Health. Joseph Goldberger, a doctor, discovered the cause 
of the pellagra, which was a scourge of the South in this country, a 
dietary deficiency because of bad diet. That came from the Institutes 
of Health.
  In 1930, a Senator from Louisiana by the name of Ramsdell started the 
National Institute, one, the National Institute of Health. It was to 
give fellowships to physicians to study problems in the health care 
system. That situation went on from that day to this day.
  Now they tried to do it in the private sector. After the First World 
War and all of the problems of chemical warfare, the Congress said let 
the private sector figure out how to do it, and they couldn't do it. 
They couldn't find anybody to finance it, and so they came and 
established the National Institute of Health in the government.
  In 1937, they added the National Institute of Cancer. And in 1938, 
they built the first building up in Bethesda, Building 6.
  Now until the Second World War, they discovered and worked on various 
things, and then the war came, and they spent an enormous amount of 
effort trying to figure out the health problems of this country. People 
don't realize, 43 percent of the people who were inducted or brought 
forward to be inducted into the Army were rejected because they were 
unfit physically. The National Institutes of Health went to work on 
that. There were a whole variety of issues--diet, teeth, syphilis, all 
kinds of things that were not being done in this society, and they did 
the initial research on that.
  In 1946 after the war, they decided we've got to expand this thing 
and they began creating new Institutes of Health. One was arthritis and 
metabolic diseases. That's where we started working on diabetes. Then 
they did allergy and infectious disease, which is what went on to deal 
with AIDS.
  In 1970, there were 15 Institutes of Health. Today, there are 27. All 
over this country in every university and everywhere you look, there 
are scientists and physicians who are submitting grants to the 
Institutes of Health on issues that affect all of us. It has been the 
practice until very recently that one out of five of them is accepted. 
One is good, four are not so good. We're going to pick the one that's 
good and put our effort there. We are down at the point where we are 
now doing 6 out of 100; 6 out of 100. This country that boasts about 
our health care system is killing it by this kind of bill, by squeezing 
the National Institutes of Health to death.
  Mr. Speaker, bring out a clean bill and let's start up the National 
Institutes of Health.

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