What contemporaneous evidence exists about the medical examiners who certified draft disqualifications in NYC during 1968?

1. What the municipal archives show about 1968 examiners

The New York City Municipal Archives maintains a Board of Examiners series that explicitly covers 1968–1970 (Box 356.1, Folder 11), which appears to be the most direct contemporaneous repository for records about medical examiners and their actions in that period, but the collection is only available for in-person research with advance notice and some series are restricted ^[1], meaning the archives hold primary material but those documents are not fully published online for immediate verification ^[3].

2. How contemporaneous journalism documented the phenomenon

National reporting from the era chronicled a sharp rise in medical disqualifications and pointed to inequities and potential fraud in the draft medical system—a New York Times survey in 1970 described patterns of youths seeking “medical outs,” disparities by region and race, and cited specific allegations involving a New York City psychiatrist whose practices were presented as suspect—yet that reporting focused on trends and particular controversies rather than producing a complete list of certifying examiners from 1968 ^[2].

3. The institutional actors: OCME and the Board of Examiners context

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) existed as the City agency responsible for forensic medicine in New York City and was the institutional home for medical examiners in the century-long sense (established 1918), but OCME’s modern descriptions emphasize death investigation rather than the administrative certification of draft fitness, and the provided OCME sources describe its mission without detailing draft-era certification procedures or naming 1968 certifying physicians ^{[4] [5]}.

4. Records retention and why direct lists are scarce in secondary sources

State and local archival practice treats certain coroner/medical examiner records as either permanent or long-retention series—New York State guidance shows violent or suspicious death records are permanent while natural death records have multi-decade retention rules ^[6]—which helps explain why municipal archives preserve Board of Examiners materials ^[1], but contemporaneous press and later secondary sources did not routinely publish exhaustive examiner rosters, so readily accessible public lists of the individual physicians who signed draft disqualification certificates in 1968 do not appear in the supplied reporting ^{[2] [1]}.

5. What the sources do not provide and the limits of contemporaneous evidence

None of the supplied documents produce an easily searchable, public roster of the New York City medical examiners who certified draft disqualifications in 1968; instead the archival guide confirms existence of primary files that must be consulted in person ^[1], and contemporary journalism supplies context and named controversies but not comprehensive personnel records ^[2]. The municipal archive and OCME represent the most promising primary sources for identifying individual examiners, yet the available excerpts make clear that further, in-archive research is necessary to extract names, certificates, and procedural details ^{[1] [3] [5]}.

6. Bottom line and next steps for verification

Contemporaneous evidence exists in two complementary forms: archival Board of Examiners files at the NYC Municipal Archives that cover 1968–1970 and contemporaneous news reporting that documents the broader phenomenon and specific allegations in New York City, but neither the publicly excerpted archives listing nor the press pieces provided here supplies a published, definitive roster of the examiners who certified draft disqualifications in 1968; obtaining that roster would require consulting the Municipal Archives’ Box 356.1, Folder 11 and related OCME records in person or via an archivist ^{[1] [3] [2]}.