The Institute
of Medicine’s
New President

DR. DONALD S. FREDRICKSON

formerly director of intramural research
NATIONAL HEART AND LUNG INSTITUTE

 

In our society, and in our time, access to quality health care has come
to be accepted as one of the inalienable human rights. But the guarantee of
this new right is not a reality. It is an ideal to be approached... .

... Our commitment is to help lend the scientific method to the
direction of a whole social movement. There have been many encouraging
signs of acceptance of the Institute of Medicine as uniquely qualified to
perform this public service.... And the acceptance, the success, and the
meaning of this organization rests upon its having the essence, not merely
the appearance, of nonpartisan objectivity.

...1 believe that the criticality and skepticism and orthodoxy of
method that one encounters in the biological sciences is transferable to
problems more social or economic in content... and that objectivity is
an equal requirement for all.

I also believe that the acquisition of new knowledge is a fundamental
determinant of health and health care . . . and that scientific discovery and
its technological extension are coordinate with, and inseparable from,
quality, manpower, medical ethics and law, and other principal themes we
have begun to develop.

Excerpts from inaugural address
May 8, 1974

Institute of Medicine

National Academy of Sciences
2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W,
Washington, D.C. 20418