Basil O'Connor, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the Reorganization of Polio Research in the United States, 1935–41

Abstract

The costs associated with polio research in the late 1920s were high, while sources for research funding remained scarce. This began to change in the early 1930s with the creation of three private philanthropies that would form the basis of a system to fund polio research adequately: the International Committee for the Study of Infantile Paralysis (1928), The President's Birthday Ball Commission (1934), and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (1938). This article explores how these three organizations shaped the process for directing funds to polio research. Beginning with the International Committee, all three philanthropies used medical advisory committees as vehicles for the review of proposals for research. The National Foundation adopted many of the policies and procedures of the earlier organizations, drawing on the experiences, misfortunes, and successes of its predecessors. The National Foundation also relied on some of the same personnel, although the microbiologist and writer Paul de Kruif, who was an influential figure in the early years, was gradually pushed out. This essay explores the establishment of the medical advisory committees of the National Foundation and reveals how by 1941 under leadership of Basil O'Connor and Dr. Thomas Rivers they developed a systematic and readily legitimated process for directing funding. By 1941, the NFIP had in place the fund-raising capacity to underwrite the scientific research that would ultimately produce two successful polio vaccines in the next twenty years.