Subject: Bernadine Healy, Cardiologist, to Head NIH
Date: Published: 9/10/90 (103 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Who's News:
    Health Secretary Picks Bernadine Healy,
    Cardiologist, to Head National Institutes
    ----
    By Kenneth H. Bacon
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    WASHINGTON -- Health and Human Services Secretary Louis
 Sullivan has selected Bernadine Healy, a cardiologist, to
 become the director of the National Institutes of Health.
    In addition, HHS officials said that Dr. Sullivan is about
 to choose David Kessler, the medical director of the Albert
 Einstein College of Medicine in New York, as the next
 commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
    Dr. Kessler, a former aide to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah),
 is a member of an HHS advisory committee examining the FDA,
 which has lately suffered from problems ranging from
 inspector shortages to revelations of fraud in the
 generic-drug approval process.  The FDA post has been vacant
 since last November, and the nomination would require Senate
 confirmation.
    HHS officials said that Dr. Sullivan already has asked the
 White House to clear the appointment of Dr. Healy, who is
 chairman of the Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic
 Foundation.  Dr. Healy won't be formally offered the National
 Institutes post until the White House approves, but HHS
 officials said she has told Dr. Sullivan she is interested in
 the directorship of the world's leading medical research
 organization.
    A member of Dr. Healy's office said she was on vacation
 and couldn't be reached for comment.
    The appointment of Dr. Healy would be a coup for Dr. 
 Sullivan.  Her prestige would help address recent complaints
 in Congress and elsewhere that the National Institutes has
 paid insufficient attention to diseases affecting women, to
 testing promising new therapies on women and to promoting
 women researchers.  Dr. Healy, a former president of the
 American Heart Association, has spoken out publicly on the
 need to move more women into leadership positions in medical
 research and administration.
    The National Institutes post has been vacant since Aug. 1,
 1989, when the Bush administration's anti-abortion politics
 forced Director James Wyngaarden to resign.  Several prominent
 physicians, including Anthony Fauci, who heads the AIDS
 research program at the National Institutes, and William
 Danforth, the chancellor of Washington University in St. 
 Louis and the brother of Sen. John Danforth (R., Mo.), have
 rejected the job.
    Scientists have said that the post's relatively low salary
 and limited authority, as well as fears that the
 administration's anti-abortion policies would limit some
 research initiatives, have made the National Institutes post
 difficult to fill.
    To address these concerns, Dr. Sullivan announced that the
 White House had assured him that "standards of scientific and
 administrative excellence and leadership," not politics,
 would prevail in the selection.  He also has vowed to seek
 more authority and pay for the National Institutes director.
 Currently, the National Institutes director makes around
 $100,000 annually, about half what heads of medical school
 departments earn.
    Dr. Healy's appointment would show that the administration
 isn't imposing an ideological litmus test for the National
 Institutes post.  HHS officials said Dr. Healy has opposed the
 administration's ban on the use of fetal tissue in research.
 The administration fears that if fetal-tissue transplants led
 to new treatments for such degenerative diseases as
 Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, pressure for abortions could
 rise.  Dr. Healy has served as the president of the American
 Federation for Clinical Research, which has opposed the
 government's ban on fetal-tissue research.
    Dr. Healy has some Washington experience.  She is a member
 of President Bush's Council of Advisers on Science and
 Technology, and she was deputy director of the White House
 Office of Science and Technology Policy from February 1984
 through September 1985.
    At the Cleveland Clinic, which is headed by her husband,
 Floyd Loop, Dr. Healy has worked aggressively to boost the
 budget and prestige of the Research Institute.  Research
 funding grew to $36 million last year from $8 million in
 1985, with much of the money coming from the National
 Institutes.
@        By contrast, the National Institutes budget is $7.6
 billion this year.  Yet the National Institutes faces a
 variety of problems -- funding hasn't kept up with research
 demands and many talented scientists are leaving for higher
 paying jobs elsewhere.  In addition, the new National
 Institutes director will face a host of complex policy issues
 ranging from how to prevent research fraud to developing
 rules to sorting out the ethical and legal issues that arise
 as scientists learn how to analyze genes to detect disease
 and manipulate genes in an effort to cure or prevent disease.
    ---
    Timothy Noah contributed to this article.

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the 
personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the 
hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering 
from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]