WASHINGTON-The search for a successor to James Wyngaarden as director of the National Institutes of Health has begun, and members of the committee given the job of sifting through the applications say that the process isn't wired.

"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...

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