Statement by the President on Announcing the Establishment of the John E. Fogarty International Center for Advanced Study in the Health Sciences.
WE EXPECT the Center to attract leading scientists and scholars from all over the world.
The exchange of knowledge among the world's foremost scientists will help move us toward the solution of health problems that beset the people of all nations.
We hope to form an alliance of the best in medical thought to develop the health sciences to collaborate in advancing knowledge and to foster international cooperation.
Of primary concern is the problem of world population. We need an exchange of views on the development of research into social and economic aspects of the population problem as well as into the biological questions of human reproduction and fertility control.
We need to share our knowledge and learn from others about malnutrition and its relation to infectious diseases, particularly in infants and young children.
We need to study the basic problems of the environmental determinants of disease and the potential contribution of the environment to human health.
And we must exchange ideas about how to solve the problem of the shortage of health manpower.
We look to the Center to focus attention on all of these and many other areas of worldwide concern.
The Center will be an appropriate memorial to the late Congressman Fogarty whose many years of devotion to the cause of human health and well-being gave this Nation world leadership in health research.
Note: The President's statement was made public as part of a White House release (4 Weekly Comp. Pres. Docs., p. 1152), which announced that the Center would be located at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and would be directed by Dr. Milo D. Leavitt, Jr., former Director of the NIH Office of Program Planning. The Center, the release said, would be named for the late Representative John E. Fogarty of Rhode Island who presented the idea for the Center to the Third International Conference on World Health in September 1963. Following the President's February 1967 message on health and education in America, the release added, Congress appropriated $500,000 in planning funds for the Center, which would begin immediate operations in existing NIH facilities pending completion in 1972 of new quarters to accommodate the international conference and seminar program and the scholars-in-residence program.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President on Announcing the Establishment of the John E. Fogarty International Center for Advanced Study in the Health Sciences. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/237906