"There's no shoo-in for the job," says Joseph ("Ed") Rall, NIH deputy director for intramural research. "I expect an open and honest search. I don't see anyone on the committee with a political agenda."
James Mason, the new assistant secretary for health within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is chairman of a nine-member advisory committee that will handle the search. The committee consists of Rall: microbiologist Harold Amos of Harvard University; Theodore Cooper, chief executive officer of the Upjohn Company and the assistant secretary for health under President Ford; Assistant Surgeon General James Dickson; James Gavin, professor of medicine at the University of Oklahoma health sciences center; Nobel laureate Frederick Robbins of Case Western Reserve University; Richard Ross, dean of the Johns Hopkins University medical school; and Virginia Weldon, vice president for scientific affairs at Monsanto Company.
The panel, which met for the first time earlier this ...
