CLINTON TAPS NOBEL LAUREATE TO HEAD INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
Author: Associated Press
Date: Wednesday, August 4, 1993
Page: 23
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN
WASHINGTON -- A microbiologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize, Dr. Harold
E. Varmus of the University of California, San Francisco, was picked by
President Clinton yesterday to head the National Institutes of Health.
If confirmed by the Senate, Varmus would be the first Nobel laureate to
lead the nation's premier biomedical research agency.
Clinton, in a statement, called Varmus "one of the world's leading medical
researchers" and said he "will bring great strength and leadership to the
National Institutes of Health."
The NIH, with a budget of $11 billion, is the major source of funding for
cutting-edge research on heart disease, cancer, AIDS and a host of other ills
in universities and hospitals across the country as well as its own
prestigious laboratories and clinic on a 300-acre campus in Bethesda, Md.
Varmus, 53, shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology with
his colleague at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. J. Michael
Bishop, for their discovery of oncogenes, which cause cancer.
Varmus would succeed Dr. Bernardine Healy, a cardiologist who resigned
June 30 after two years. The job had gone begging in the first two years of
the Bush administration in part because of difficulties in finding a prominent
scientist who supported the Republicans' ban on fetal tissue research.
The appointment of Varmus could serve as a morale booster for the agency,
enmeshed in controversy recently over widespread complaints of race and sex
bias. NIH has 14,700 full-time employees, including 4,000 scientists with
doctorates. Four of the NIH's in-house scientists have won Nobel Prizes.
Varmus grew up in Freeport, N.Y., the son of a doctor and psychiatric
social worker. He graduated from Amherst College in 1961 as an English major
and editor of the school paper. He earned a master's degree in English from
Harvard University, then a medical degree from Columbia University in 1966.
While in medical school, he worked for three months at a mission hospital
in India. He went to the University of California, San Francisco, as a
postdoctoral fellow in 1970 and began his collaboration with Bishop.
The work that won Varmus and Bishop the Nobel Prize demonstrated that
cancer genes can arise from normal cellular genes. Their research has led to
the discovery of more than 40 different genes that can cause cancer.
Varmus also spent two years in the 1970s as a clinical associate at NIH's
National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases.
Varmus' wife, Constance Casey, is a book critic for The Los Angeles Times.
They have two sons, Jacob, a University of Iowa student, and Christopher, a
high school student.
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