Their Minds Were on Sleep

The National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research was appointed by Louis W. Sullivan, secretary of Health and Human Services, in early 1990 and was staffed by scientists from the National Institutes of Health and academic research sleep centers.

It also had advisers from myriad medical specialties, government agencies and private groups. The report, based on two years of study that included eight regional hearings, was endorsed by a number of national organizations, including the American College of Chest Physicians, the American Thoracic Society (the medical arm of the American Lung Assn.), the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Alliance, the National Sleep Foundation and the American Sleep Disorders Assn.

Noting that sleep disturbances seem to increase with age, Robert Butler, chairman of the department of geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and former director of the National Institute on Aging, said the commission’s recommendations constituted “an incredibly important project, requiring an orbital leap in funding . . . in an era where real peril comes from a failure to better understand the nature of sleep.”