Health Institutes Chief Quits to Run N.Y. Cancer Center
Dr. Harold E. Varmus, the only Nobel laureate to head the National Institutes of Health, announced Thursday that he is resigning to become director of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Credited with restoring NIH’s basic scientific mission and with putting real muscle in its research budget during his six years as director, Varmus urged President Clinton to appoint another scientist to the post--and quickly.
“My departure has nothing to do with any disenchantment with what’s going on in government or at NIH but with the feeling that it is time to make a change and to seize an opportunity to come to a truly extraordinary place and help it shape its ability to diminish the burden of cancer,” Varmus told reporters and colleagues at Sloan-Kettering, the largest cancer center in the world.
Unlike past NIH directors, Varmus came to the government post as a scientist with little administrative experience to run the 25 institutes of health, which do research on everything from cancer to strokes. Last year the institutes had a combined budget of $15.6 billion.
Tall, affable and professorial, Varmus commuted daily by bicycle from his home in Washington to NIH headquarters in nearby Bethesda, Md., setting an example of health and fitness that he hoped others would follow.
He and fellow UC San Francisco researcher J. Michael Bishop won the Nobel Prize in 1989 for their finding that normal genes controlling growth can transform themselves into cancer-causing cells. His credentials as a scientist endeared him to the biomedical community, which believed the agency had become too entangled in political fights with Congress.
Varmus, 59, is credited by many with balancing Congress’ attempts to influence the direction of federally funded research and with defense of needed research in scientific areas that were also hot-button political issues, such as stem-cell research and abortion.
He argued convincingly to Congress that U.S. biomedical researchers needed to stay in the forefront of significant medical advances. But he also demonstrated a willingness to defer to many of Congress’ wishes, saying he understood that NIH’s financial backing came from Capitol Hill and that lawmakers deserved a say in how it was spent. As a result, he enjoyed considerable bipartisan support from many in Congress.
His departure is not unexpected. When he took the job in 1993, he vowed to stay only six years. Yet experts said that his imprint on the agency will be lasting.
“He really led NIH into a golden era,” said Dr. David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and now dean of Yale University School of Medicine. “He set NIH on a course for decades to come as a national gem and it would take a lot to reverse that.”
