and said that Michniewicz's death had shown her that "as the body becomes weaker, so the spirit becomes stronger". Saunders said that after 11 years of thinking about the project, she had drawn up a comprehensive plan and sought finance after reading Psalm 37: "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass." She succeeded in engaging the support of Albertine Winner, the deputy chief medical officer at the Ministry of Health at the time. Later, as Dame Albertine Winner, she served as chair of St Christopher's. In 1965, Saunders was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire. In 1967, St Christopher's Hospice, the world's first purpose-built hospice, was established. The hospice was founded on the principles of combining teaching and clinical research, expert pain and symptom relief with holistic care to meet the physical, social, psychological and spiritual needs of its patients and those of their family and friends. St Christopher’s Hospice was developed based on a care philosophy that "you matter because you are you, you matter to the last moment of your life", an approach requiring specialist care which led to a new medical specialty – palliative care – that could be adapted to different situations. Research shows that St Christopher's was quite different from hospitals in the 1960s, designed and managed as a "home from home" where the physical environment was important. It was a place where patients could garden, write, talk – and get their hair done. There was always, Saunders would emphasize, so much more to be done, and she worked in this spirit as its medical director from 1967, and then, from 1985, as its chairperson, a post she occupied until 2000 when she became president. She was, however, reluctant for St Christopher's to admit patients with AIDS in the years after the syndrome first emerged. In a letter to the Secretary of State for Social Services, she stated, "we have strong reservations about the use of our existing inpatient facilities for AIDS patients", explaining in a memorandum to the Select Committee on Social Services: "A hospice ward is a very personal place, welcoming families, with their children, to be with the dying family member. Among them, I believe, there would be many who would extremely fearful of doing this if they knew AIDS patients were being admitted. However irrational, this fear is