Yellow Berets

During the Vietnam War, there was a compulsory draft of American physicians. One of the few alternatives to service in Vietnam was a position in the Public Health Service. The limited number of such appointments made them highly competitive—especially for doctors who wanted to join the clinical associate program at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Successful candidates, sometimes derogatorily described as “Yellow Berets,” trained there under leading laboratory scientists and provided care to patients at the campus research hospital. Among the roughly 200 trainees who entered the clinical associate program in 1968, four physicians with little or no prior research experience—Joseph Goldstein, Michael Brown, Harold Varmus, and Robert Lefkowitz—went on to distinguished careers crowned by Nobel Prizes, the highest honor in science. Medal Winners: How the Vietnam War Launched Nobel Careers explores the NIH clinical associates program and its impact on science and medicine through the work of these four brilliant investigators and their NIH mentors.

and the rise of the NIH associate program was undeniable. Clearly, many of the trainees were motivated to apply because of the “doctor draft.” If they had reservations about serving in the war effort, they were hardly alone, as many others managed to find alternative forms of service. Some drew attention decades later when they were elected to high national office. These include Vice President Dan Quayle, who joined the Indiana National Guard, President George W. Bush, who was in the Texas Air National Guard, and