Harold Varmus

The director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Harold Varmus, has confirmed that he will leave his post at the end of the year and become President and Chief Executive Officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The post of NIH director is a political appointment and in a letter to President Clinton, Varmus urged him to hire another medical research scientist to head the agency before Clinton finishes his second term at the end of 2000.

The consensus in the biomedical community is that Varmus set an exceptionally high standard as director and will be a hard act to follow. He is credited with almost single-handedly persuading Congress to invest so heavily in biomedical research. Under Varmus' leadership, the NIH budget grew to $15 billion in FY99 from less than $11 billion. The budget could rise by a further $2 billion in FY00 depending on the outcome of current Labor–HHS appropriations discussions between the House and the Senate in the US Congress. (see http://medicine.nature.com/breaking_news)