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HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES
A Celebration, a Beginning
Varmus Tells Graduates of the Promise of Science
By William J. Cromie
Gazette Staff
In his Commencement Address last week, Harold Varmus sang a hopeful song
about cures for disease but sounded a sour note about our willingness to
pay for them. The director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said
that the key to both is the federal government.
"Science can improve our lives in ways that are elegant in design and
moving in practice," he noted. The government not only funds scientific
research targeted at specific illnesses, but also fundamental studies in
biology, physics, and chemistry that will provide unimagined benefits in
the future.
"The federal government, much maligned in current politics, can be
a powerful source for public good," he continued. It can cooperate
productively with universities, where diseases are studied, and with industries,
where drugs are manufactured.
"Working together, universities, corporations, and the federal government
have won major victories, but many challenges remain, he said. Polio and
smallpox have been conquered, but there are new and intractable viruses
such as Ebola and HIV, and bacteria that have become resistant to drugs,
such as some strains of TB organisms.
"We have dramatically reduced death rates from heart attacks and strokes,
but we are still seeking ways to repair hearts and brains damaged by poor
blood flow," Varmus noted. "Yes, we know the mutant genes responsible
for many cancers, but we haven't transformed that knowledge into better
therapies. We've extended the average life span in this country to nearly
80 years, but have made little progress against maladies that make advanced
years intolerable for so many people."
Varmus told the graduates that "nearly half of you will live past age
85." By that time about 20 million Americans will have reached that
age.
"Today, there are only 4 million people in this group, and the government
spends $25 billion each year on medical care for them," Varmus said.
"Multiply that by five. Then add the costs of care for the much larger
group between ages 65 and 85. Without more public revenue from taxes,
there will be little or no money left for other things the government
buys, including scientific research that might help relieve the disorders
of aging."
At a press conference following his speech, Varmus pointed out that entitlement
programs, such as Medicare and welfare, are ballooning while funds for research
become more scarce. Cutting back on the latter hinders the creation of knowledge
that will make the future a better and healthier place.
Rather than "paralyzing the future, we should be investing in it,"
he insisted. Asked about ways to do that, Varmus mentioned higher taxes
and reduced spending, specifically, less military spending. He noted that
taxes in the United States are not as high as those in many other developed
countries. One of his suggestions was to include a box on federal tax returns
to allow people to contribute individually to basic research, the way some
states solicit funds for conservation and other causes.
"We should not try to balance the budget by robbing the future to pay
for today's medical services," Varmus said. "Rather we should
provide enough money for both."
NIH's budget for this fiscal year is about $12 billion; for fiscal '97 it
is expected to be about the same. Asked how he would spend additional funds,
Varmus answered: "We should invest in the hottest areas of research,
whether or not we can directly identify how they would aid the treatment
of disease.
"These are areas where new knowledge is developing most rapidly and
providing deeper insights into human biology. They include such things as
knowing what proteins certain genes are responsible for producing, how these
genes turn on and off, and how defective proteins lead to unhealthy conditions."
Research Defeats Polio
In the Commencement Address, Varmus told a story of how knowledge-driven
research eventually pays off for the public. He described growing up on
Long Island, N.Y., with the fear of polio, a common paralyzing illness at
the time. "It afflicted our family hero [President] Franklin D. Roosevelt,"
he recalled. "Public swimming pools were forbidden. Neighborhood kids
nearly died of the disease."
Jonas Salk achieved fame by developing the first polio vaccine in 1953,
when Varmus was 14. Stirred by this, Varmus decided to tell Salk's story
in a school speaking contest. But his father, a family doctor, and his mother,
a social worker, talked him out of it. They persuaded him to talk instead
about John F. Enders, a Harvard Medical School scientist, who found an easy
way to grow large quantities of the polio virus in a laboratory dish.
"Enders' discovery was pivotal because Salk needed vast amounts of
inactivated polio virus for use in the vaccine," Varmus noted. He admired
the "subtle triumph" of learning how to grow the virus more than
Salk's highly heralded success at making the vaccine. "Enders became
a heroic figure for me," Varmus recalled, though he didn't win the
speaking contest.
Enders won a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1954 for his work with the polio
virus. Varmus won the same prize in 1989 for his work with cancer viruses.
Alzheimer's -- A Modern Polio
Enders could not have accomplished what he did without support for basic
research. The same type of support is needed to uncover the causes and find
a treatment for Alzheimer's disease, which Varmus referred to as "a
modern polio."
"It destroys the brain and the personality," he said. "Its
victims become a burden to spouses and children. . . . Unless things change,
nearly half of us who reach age 85 will have signs of the disease."
Speaking of what future funds might buy, Varmus offered a scenario wherein
"a brilliant young neuroscientist, our new Enders, is trying to understand
[brain] cell survival, perhaps by studying a hormone that keeps the cells
alive in a [laboratory] dish. One of her students, working late, suggests
a novel interaction between the hormone and a protein made from a gene that
causes an inherited form of Alzheimer's.
"Someone in a lab thousands of miles away learns about this experiment
and tries it in a different way, perhaps in a mouse" bred to get the
disease at an early age. "A young Salk, seeking an anti-Alzheimer's
drug at a biotechnology company, tries to block the hormone-protein reaction.
We are on the way."
To make such things happen, he said, we need new talent, enthusiasm for
science, money, and strong institutions. But, Varmus said, "the federal
government is broke and under attack by its own citizens. Other countries
have recently surpassed our rate of spending for basic research. Universities
and colleges are more strapped for funds than ever before. And many industries
are turning away from research investments."
Varmus noted that the solution to these problems involves all taxpayers
and citizens of the world, not just scientists and physicians. He quoted
the words of English philosopher-statesman Francis Bacon, who said that
science can, like "no empire, no sect, no star," change "the
whole face and state of things throughout the world."
Copyright
1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College
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