I was born in the shadow of World War II, on December 18, 1939, on the South Shore of Long Island, a product of the early -wentieth-century emigration of Eastern European Jewry to New York City and its environs. — 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, but it also has a set of changes in the genes or in the molecules that modify gene behavior that allows us to categorize cancers in ways that is very useful in thinking about new ways… — Harold E. Varmus Copy Share
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
