In May 1948 Sister Elizabeth Kenny went to Washington, D.C. for the first time. Kenny, an Australian nurse who had developed a new and controversial method of polio therapy, had been invited to appear as a witness before a Congressional committee investigating scientific research policy. Kenny praised a proposed National Medical Research Foundation to fund research into cancer, polio and degenerative diseases which would be directed by an advisory committee made up of physicians and lay people. And she thoroughly enjoyed her opportunity to challenge officials of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (or March of Dimes) who were lobbying against the inclusion of polio in any such agency.

