Words matter. These are the best Harold E. Varmus Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I had learned that science is a rewarding, active process of discovery, not the passive absorption of what others had discovered.
When I read about genetics, I see breakthroughs every day. And while I’m trying to learn more about behavioral science, I must say that I don’t feel I get tremendous intellectual stimulation from most of the things I read.
The NCI scientific programme leaders meet regularly to ensure that we are not ignoring highly original proposals and that we are not creating an unbalanced grant portfolio.
Science can improve lives in ways that are elegant in design and moving in practice.
My ideal summer day was reading on the porch.
When I was the NIH director, I often expressed envy of institute directors: they had the money and ran the scientific programmes.
In preparation for a career in academic medicine, I worked as a medical house officer at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital from 1966 to 1968 and then joined Ira Pastan’s laboratory at the National Institutes of Health as a Clinical Associate.
I had learned of Gertrude Stein’s bon mot that medicine opened all doors. This prompted me, in different moods, to view my future life as literary psychiatrist, globe-trotting tropical disease specialist, or academic internist.
The public schools I attended were dominated by athletics and rarely inspiring intellectually, but I enjoyed a small circle of interesting friends despite my ineptitude at team sports and my preference for reading.
Tobacco, UV rays, viruses, heredity, and age are the main causes of cancer.
Every cancer looks different. Every cancer has similarities to other cancers. And we’re trying to milk those differences and similarities to do a better job of predicting how things are going to work out and making new drugs.
Some growths can be detected early, making for increased accuracy in diagnosis. Some can be cured and others controlled.
Cancer is a collection of many diseases with common principles, and each disease will have to be understood and more effectively controlled on its own terms.
I keep encouraging the pharmaceutical companies to put more money into R&D.
A major feature of life at the NIH in late 1960s was the extraordinary offering of evening courses for physicians attempting to become scientists as they neared thirty.
In the 1960s and ’70s, there wasn’t much evidence at all. We knew vaguely the causes of cancer, but methods like genomics were very new.
Just after graduation in 1966, like many of my contemporaries, I applied for research training at the National Institutes of Health. Perhaps because his wife was a poet, Ira Pastan agreed to take me into his laboratory, despite my lack of scientific credentials.
Anyone graduating from medical school in 1966 had first to fulfill military service before launching a career. Fiercely opposed to the Vietnam War, I sought to avoid it through an assignment to the Public Health Service.
In general, all cancers have been traditionally characterized by the way they appear under the microscope and the organs in which they arise.
Our biggest single theme is trying to make the NIH work better with the same amount of money.
