WASHINGTON: Varmus is Obama's Pick for National Cancer Institute

After months of speculation, President Barack Obama announced his intent to appoint Harold Varmus, MD, as Director of the National Cancer Institute. Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, co-recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, and recent co-chair of President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, has served as the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City since January 2000.