The pathology of regulation

Clinical pathology officially began when inquisitive physicians in the nineteenth century sought explanations for the diseases they observed in their patients. The increasing application of the basic sciences to patients required physicians to spend more time and energy in the laboratory than with their patients. Methodology followed new technologic innovations that the profession began to critically review in the late 1940s. Initially, government involvement in laboratories was minimal and supportive. The role of the government evolved over the last decades from a patron of learning to a purchaser of a regulated commodity and paralleled the changing role of the clinical laboratory from medical practice to big business.