I saw my friends in medical school seeming to be more engaged with the real world. That provoked a sort of jealousy, and I decided to go to medical school after all. — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
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. — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
As an undergraduate at Amherst College, I was devoted to Dickensian novels and antiestablishment journalism while marginally fulfilling premedical requirements. — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
A cancer is not simply a lung cancer. It doesn't simply have a certain kind of appearance under the microscope or a certain behavior,… — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
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… — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
Tobacco, UV rays, viruses, heredity, and age are the main causes of cancer. — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
I had learned that science is a rewarding, active process of discovery, not the passive absorption of what others had discovered. — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
Following graduation from Amherst, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship enabled me to test the depth of my interest in literary scholarship by beginning graduate studies… — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
From some dilatory reading in the early 1960s, I knew enough about viruses and their association with tumors in animals to understand that they… — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
I keep encouraging the pharmaceutical companies to put more money into R&D. — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
Science can improve lives in ways that are elegant in design and moving in practice. — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
I begin with the premise that behavior is an incredibly important element in medicine. Peoples habits, their willingness to quit smoking, their willingness to… — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
Just after graduation in 1966, like many of my contemporaries, I applied for research training at the National Institutes of Health. Perhaps because his… — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
The public schools I attended were dominated by athletics and rarely inspiring intellectually, but I enjoyed a small circle of interesting friends despite my… — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share Image
