Subject: Clinton Plans To Pick Varmus As Head of NIH 
Date: Published: 7/8/93 (74 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Politics & Policy:
    Clinton Plans
    To Pick Varmus
    As Head of NIH
    ----
    By Marilyn Chase and Hilary Stout
    Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal

    President Clinton plans to nominate Harold Varmus, a Nobel
 Prize-winning microbiologist, to be director of the National
 Institutes of Health, administration officials said.
    If confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Varmus, 53 years old, would
 oversee a budget of $10.6 billion and the awarding of grants for
 research probing virtually all human diseases.
    A professor of microbiology and biochemistry at the University of
 California at San Francisco, Dr. Varmus is better known for his
 bench research than for his experience as an administrator.  He has
 also fought to keep basic research free of political constraints.
    In April, he helped to circulate a letter with other scientists
 expressing concern over plans to create an Office of AIDS Research,
 contending that such an office would wield discretionary power over
 the funding of AIDS research and could make NIH "a political
 battleground among disease interest groups."  As NIH director he
 would have to oversee that office, recently created by Congress.
    UCSF officials said Dr. Varmus is vacationing and doesn't plan to
 comment until a formal appointment is announced.
    Dr. Varmus shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for medicine with longtime
 UCSF colleague J. Michael Bishop.  The award acknowledged their work
 on viral oncogenes, -- the genetic seeds of cancer that are found in
 viruses and in the genetic code of all animals, from flies to fish
 to humans.
    In making its award, the Nobel Committee cited the researchers'
 "discovery of the cellular origins of retroviral oncogenes."  These
 are special viruses that pass their genetic information in a
 backward manner.
    The two scientists observed that the Rous sarcoma virus, a virus
 that causes cancer in chickens, is also found in normal cells.  Their
 discovery that even sinister oncogenes sometimes play a role in
 normal cell growth and differentiation helped scientists to
 understand the interplay between normal growth and malignancy.  And
 the discovery has offered doctors new focal points for cancer
 research.
    Since the Nobel Prize-winning work, Drs. Varmus and Bishop have
 continued to probe the role of oncogenes by creating transgenic mice
 endowed with extra copies of such genes.  Dr. Varmus also has worked
 on a mouse mammary tumor gene called INT-1.
    He played a behind-the-scenes role in helping name the AIDS virus
 -- which had been the subject of a semantic tug-of-war between
 French researcher Luc Montagnier, who called it LAV, for
 lymphadenopathy associated virus, and U. S. researcher Robert Gallo,
 who wanted to name it HTLV-III, for human T-lymphotropic virus.  The
 consensus name he helped choose -- human immunodeficiency virus, or
 HIV -- has stuck.
    Meanwhile, conservative groups held a news conference to denounce
 Joycelyn Elders, Mr. Clinton's choice for surgeon general.  Dr. 
 Elders, who was head of the Arkansas Department of Health, has been
 a supporter of abortion rights.  She has set up a program of school
 health clinics in Arkansas that dispense condoms in districts where
 the local school board allowed it.
    Donna Shalala, the secretary of health and human services, issued
 a statement strongly defending Dr. Elders.  "Joycelyn Elders has an
 outstanding reputation as a forceful and realistic leader for public
 health ...Those who would portray Dr. Elders as being radical or
 out of touch with the desires of the American people are distorting
 her record in an effort to prove their claims," she said.

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