The National Research Act was enacted by the 93rd United States Congress. It created the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research to oversee and regulate the use of human experimentation in medicine. It was partly a response to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study. The act was signed into law on July 12, 1974. The Ninety-third United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, DC from January 3, 1973 to January 3, 1975, during the end of Richard Nixon's presidency, and the beginning of Gerald Ford's.