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BRODER RESIGNS
From The Cancer Chronicles #26
© Feb. 1995 by Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.
In late December, Samuel Broder, MD announced that he was
stepping down as director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
He will become chief scientific officer, at more than twice his
current salary, of a Miami-based chemotherapy company, Ivax,
Inc.
Harold Varmus, MD, head of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH), NCI's parent body, announced that he had assembled a
search committee for a new director. The committee will be
headed by Paul Marks, MD, president of Memorial Sloan -
Kettering Cancer Center in New York. This committee will
operate at a "lively pace," Varmus promised, and by March is
expected to present three to five candidates to the White House.
Because of provisions in the National Cancer Act of 1971, the job
does not require Senate confirmation.
At the same time, the deputy director and the heads of cancer
etiology, cancer therapy, tumor virus biology, cellular and
molecular biology, molecular oncology, chemoprevention, and
tumor cell biology have either left NCI already or in the process
of doing so. According to Science, NCI is being "hollowed out" as
top doctors accept large salaries outside the institute. Most of
them are going to head up oncology department at academic
centers, most of which in turn were built up using NCI funds. It's
a small world!
With bone marrow transplantation and other high-tech
procedures, billings for cancer patients at these hospitals have
become so lucrative that cancer in now recognized as an
"important business consideration for university hospitals," said
Science (267:24, 1995).
This moment could have presented a wonderful opportunity to
alter the losing strategy of the war on cancer. But the choice of
Dr. Marks to head the selection committee is not auspicious. In
addition to his post at MSKCC, Dr. Marks is a director of Pfizer,
Inc., a manufacturer of chemotherapeutic drugs and in one year
at MSKCC he took $2.2 million in salary. Neither he nor he
institution is a friend of alternative medicine.
The chances are therefore strong that the new candidate will
represent business-as-usual for the oncology community, and not
the kind of innovative person, open to alternatives, that is
desperately needed.
We now see the folly of having this appointment bypass the
Senate, which is less likely to be manipulated by the powerful
cancer establishment.
Coordinator Anne Beattie
@ 144 St. John's Place,
Brooklyn, NY 11217;
Phone 718-636-4433
Fax 718-636-0186