The New York Times: Political Science

By PETER DIZIKES
Published: February 12, 2009

A smiling Harold Varmus looks out from the cover of his memoir, “The Art and Politics of Science.” Behind him hangs a copy of Jacques-Louis David’s celebrated portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, the French chemist. Varmus is one of our leading scientific figures, a Nobel Prize-winning cancer researcher who advises President Obama, but I’m not sure this is an auspicious image. Lavoi­sier’s own entanglement in politics led to his beheading during the French Revolution. Thankfully, Varmus seems quite adroit in public matters.

He has also written a perceptive book about science and its civic value, arriving as the White House renews its acquaintance with empiricism. Varmus recounts his laboratory career and tenure as director of the National Institutes of Health, then surveys topical issues like stem-cell research. One implication of this book is that far from disconnecting politics and science, we should find better ways of linking them.

Varmus, who is now president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, starts with his life story and his research. Although his mother died of cancer as his career studying it began, he avoids melodrama and simply gets on with a brisk narrative of scientific exploration. In the 1970s, Varmus and colleagues discovered a series of genes, called proto-oncogenes, that can cause cancer. Grasping the mechanics of this has helped us develop drugs for numerous cancers, including leukemia and lung cancer.

Continue the article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/books/review/Dizikes-t.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=lung%20cancer&st=cse