Национальный институт неврологических расстройств и слепоты: история создания и развития.

Department of the U. S. National Institutes of Health
Established in 1950 by the U. S. Congress as the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness to help handle the casualties of World War II, NINDS grew along with the NIH. During the 1950s and 1960s, NINDS and the NIH had strong Congressional support and received significant appropriations. However, this funding declined in 1968.

The NINDS was created in 1950 to study and treat the neurological and psychiatric casualties of World War II. Many service people had returned with serious brain injuries, nerve damage, and psychological trauma. According to one estimate, "neurologically disabled veterans in the postwar years accounted for about 25 percent of the patients in general hospitals and 10 percent of those in psychiatric hospitals". In addition, 1.7 million American men had been rejected for military service due to a neuropsychiatric condition or learning disorder. At the time, psychiatry and its focus on "emotional tensions due to interpersonal, social, and cultural maladjustments" held sway in US medicine, while neurology, with its focus on the inner workings of the brain, had fallen out of favor. During WWII, all of the administrative positions of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology held by the US armed services were filled by psychiatrists. After the war, a survey by the Veteran's Administration of the members of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology found that 48 were neurologists and 456 were psychiatrists. Members of the research grants committee of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which had been founded in 1949, contend that they also helped provide an impetus for the new institute, as when reviewing grant applications they saw a significant number of neurological projects and proposed a separate institute for them.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Blindness (NINDB), the original name for the NINDS, was officially established on November 22, 1950, three months after President Harry Truman signed the Omnibus Medical Research Act (Public Law 81 692) on August 15, 1950. The legislation had been passed with the efforts of Senator Claude Pepper, who was responsible for helping the majority of the NIH institutes get their start, wealthy New York entrepreneur Mary Lasker, and Fight for Sight founder Mildred Weisenfeld, who had retinitis pigmentosa. NINDB was not conceived of entirely coherently at the beginning. For example, blindness was added because some concerned citizens raised the issue with Lasker who, in turn asked Congressman Andrew Biemiller to do so in Congress. He simply added it to the bill, being sympathetic with the cause since his mother was blind. NINDB was "responsible for conducting and supporting research and training in the 200 neurological and sensory disorders that affected 20 million individuals in the United States and were 'the first cause of permanent crippling and the third cause of death.'" In the beginning, the NINDB had an Advisory Council made of six medical professional and lay people, all appointed by the U. S. Surgeon General. They formulated the path taken by the institute and granted its funds. The NINDB's first director, Pearce Bailey, was appointed on October 3, 1951, and came with experience from the Neuropsychiatry Division at Philadelphia Naval Hospital. However, until 1961, the NINDB and NIMH shared research facilities and scientists, often collaborating on projects.