Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/298

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ARMED FORCES INSTITUTE OF PATHOLOGY


man of the subcommittee, with Capt. William M. Silliphant, MC, USN, and Maj. Robert A. Patterson, USAF, MC, as members. After eight meetings, the subcommittee filed its report on 25 March 1948, together with seven inclosures, discussing in greater detail the questions of organization, function, and operation of a pathology service for the Armed Forces. The report recommended that the Army Institute of Pathology be located on the grounds of the Walter Reed General Hospital reservation, as an independent command, directly under the command of The Surgeon General of the Army, but with the control of the broad administrative and professional policies lodged in a board composed of the Surgeons General of the three forces; and that in recognition of the joint responsibilities of all the services, the name be changed to either the Military Institute of Pathology or the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

The subcommittee's report on name and location was not accepted by the Hawley Board which, at its meeting on 9 April 1948, instructed the subcommittee to confer further with representatives of other medical and hospital establishments in the Government service. The result was a supplemental report of the inability of the subcommittee members to agree on a location, resulting in separate and dissenting reports, with the Army representative favoring the Army Medical Center as a site; the Navy representative favoring the grounds of the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md., and the Air Force representative taking the position that a "new Armed Forces Institute of Pathology * * * should not be compromised by secluding it on a post of any one service" but that the organization should continue as an Army installation, furnishing service to all the armed forces and other interested agencies. 23 [1]

On 4 October 1948, the Hawley Board filed its report on the Army Institute of Pathology in which, "after long and thoughtful evaluation of all the matters involved, and after further exploration of possible alternative solutions" the Committee concluded that the recommendations of the subcommittee in its original report constituted "the most acceptable and most practicable basis for solution of the problem."

The report of the Hawley Board on this subject was approved by Secretary Forrestal on 21 February 1949, with the request that its recommendations be put into effect as rapidly as possible. Outstanding among the recommendations for joint action were the declarations that the Institute should become "the central laboratory of pathology for all of the Armed Forces," with the appropriate change of name to the "Armed Forces Institute of Pathology"; that the

  1. 23 Supplemental reports to Committee on Medical and Hospital Services of the Armed Forces.