the Brookings Institution declined to be named to the Board, he quickly suggested Rashi Fein of the Brookings staff, whom Seitz had mentioned earlier, as a logical substitute. As Fein recalled, Gordon urged him to accept the position, and he did so with alacrity, pleased to join a "disinterested group that would be able to examine ... the issues facing the American medical system."²⁶

The National Academy of Sciences made a public announcement of the new Board, now called simply the Board on Medicine, on November 13, 1967. In its final form, the Board contained 21 men and one woman (Lucile Petry Leone of the Texas Woman's University's School of Nursing). Two of the Board members were black. Although a majority of Board members were physicians, the group also included two economists, one of whom later resigned, a nurse, a lawyer, an engineer, and at least two people identified primarily as social scientists. Only two of the physicians devoted the bulk of their time to private practice, and one was something of a "ringer." The son of Ray Lyman Wilbur, Herbert Hoover's Secretary of Commerce and a Stanford University president, Dwight Wilbur, although a clinician engaged in private medical practice, nonetheless knew many of the leaders of academic medicine. The rest of the Board on Medicine members either served as medical administrators, did research in academic settings, or both. Twelve held formal academic appointments.