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The committee of thirty-three physicians and seventeen representatives of allied professions and lay persons first convened on Feb. 25, 1943, and in a period of a little over three years has held one hundred and twenty-three meetings and has obtained information and opinion from a wide variety of authorities who "represented every shade of economic, social and political conviction that might have a bearing on medical care."
At the outset, the objectives were defined: "To be informed of the nature, quality and direction of the economic and social changes that are taking place now and that are clearly forecast for the immediate future; to define in particular how these changes are likely to affect medicine in its various aspects; to determine how the best elements in the science of medicine and in the services to the public may be preserved and embodied in whatever new social order may ultimately develop."