Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2021
The role of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the development of recommendations and guidelines on acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) evolves from a tradition that originates in the earliest editions of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). In 1961 responsibility for the Public Health Service's MMWR was transferred to CDC from the National Office of Vital Statistics. During the first decade that CDC published it, the MMWR continued the tradition of providing detailed statistics on reportable communicable diseases and unusual occurrences of disease or outbreaks of illness. Only rarely did editorial comments on the data appear. However, as early as 1962 the MMWR became the vehicle the Public Health Service used to publish the recommendations of the surgeon general's Oral Poliomyelitis Vaccine Advisory Committee, the predecessor of the current Immunization Practices Advisory Committee. This practice of publishing immunization and other public health recommendations in the MMWR has continued.