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FOIA Number: 2006-0462-F
FOIA
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the William J. Clinton
Presidential Library Staff.
Collection/Record Group:
Clinton Presidential Records
Subgroup/Office of Origin:
Speechwriting
Series/Staff Member:
Terry Edmonds
Subseries: .
OA/ID Number:
10987
FolderiD:
Folder Title:
Harvard Commencement- NIH [National Institute of Health] Director [1]
Stack:
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Section:
Shelf:
Position:
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COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
HAROLD VARMUS, DIRECTOR, Nlli
JUNE 6, 1996 (AS DELIVERED)
Mr. President, alumni, graduates, parents, friends:
Many members of today's graduating class reacted to the news that I
would give this year's Commencement Address, just as I did:
surprise.
with
The Harvard Crimson recorded some undergraduate
responses: "Who is he?"
"Wow, that's boring.
Everyone else got
someone exciting."
Editorials criticized the process by which "Dr.
Who" was selected.
I was featured in entertaining cartoons,
something that hasn't happened during three years in Washington.
I may never be this famous again.
There is an advantage to starting from low expectations.
am not running for President,
general.
Agreed, I
and I am not a prime minister or a
But I speak for an element of our culture at least as
1,
important as politics or war---an element that has not been at this
podium since Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin,
addressed the graduating class of 1945.
That element is science.
The products of science shape and pervade our lives.
Bacon made this point in 1620.
Sir Francis
"Printing, gunpowder, and the
magnet," he wrote, "have changed the whole face and state of things
�· throughout the
world.~ .. no
empire, no sect, no star seems to have
exerted greater power and influence in human affairs."
Moder.t;I
equivalents are legion: consider e-mail, nuclear weapons,
biotechnology.
I will speak today about the effects of science on our lives.
But I will
also emphasize science in its most fundamental form, the process by
which we make discoveries about the world---like the atom or the
gene--- that precede practical inventions.
At its core, science is a
way of thinking---making judgments, often creative ones, that are
based on evidence, not on desires, received beliefs, or hearsay.
Thinking in this way is not unique to the natural sciences; it is
important for many disciplines.
But the pursuit of evidence,
through experiment and observation, is the lifeblood of science.
My own brand of science is biology---more specifically, biology
linked to medicine.
I was not born a scientist.
preferred tennis and novels to chemistry sets.
In my youth, I
My father, Harvard
Class of '28, was a physician, so medical topics were often at the
dinnertable.
Like my friends, I grew up listening to parental
concerns about polio, the crippling illness then common among
children and famous for afflicting our family hero, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.
In
summertime,
public swimming pools were forbidden.
Neighborhood kids nearly died of the disease.
For my generation,
the announcement of an effective polio vaccine was a landmark.
For us, the recent eradication of naturally acquired polio from this
hemisphere still seems unbelievable.
�When I was fourteen, and Jonas Salk had just achieved fame for the
first polio vaccine, my parents taught me an important lesson about
how progress occurs m medical research.
I had intended to describe
Salk's triumph in a public speaking contest
(a contest, which,
incidentally, I did not win).
But they persuaded me to talk instead
about John Franklin Enders.
A member of the Harvard Medical
School faculty, Enders and two younger colleagues had been. the first
to grow the polio virus abundantly, by infecting animal cells m
laboratory flasks.
. Previously, virus was prepared with difficulty,
mainly from the brains of infected primates.
Enders' discovery was
pivotal, because Salk needed to inactivate vast amounts of poliovirus
for use in a vaccine.
Making and testing vaccines ---Salk's and
later Sabin's--- came to seem less stirring to me than the more subtle
triumph of learning how to grow the virus.
And Enders became a
heroic figure for me, even before I knew about his long path to
science--- studying English literature at your graduate school and
converting to microbiology at nearly thirty.
I too had trouble settling on a career.
While my fellow pre-meds
worked late in their labs, I was editing the Amherst College paper
and writing about Charles Dickens.
In a prolonged adolescence as a
Harvard graduate student, I read Beowulf, Shakespeare, and Sir
Thomas Browne, and listened to Bill Alfred, Harry Levin, and Anne
Ferry.
Finally I went to medical school---in part, because someone
once told ·Gertrude Stein that it "opened all doors," in part because
�..-----------------------------------------------
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•
medical students seemed more eager than I was. to get out of bed m
the morning.
Like many physician-scientists of my generation, I learned to do and
to love research while working at the National Institutes of Health,
the Federal agency that supports most of the basic medical research
in this country.
I arrived at the NIH as a twenty-eight year-old
doctor seeking two things:
the credentials to become a medical
school professor and an alternative to service in Vietnam.
Then,
one day some months later, I was abruptly transformed into a
committed scientist, when a method I was developing to detect
expressiOn of a gene suddenly worked.
The technique was not
especially novel, and the questions I was asking were of interest only
to a few people in the world.
But, at that moment, I knew the
intoxicating power of measurement and the sweet anticipation of my
own results.
For more than twenty years afterwards, at the University of
California in San Francisco, I enjoyed many measurements and many
results.
Despite the common myths about science, .it was not lonely
work.
Much of the pleasure came from companionship---with my
colleague, Mike Bishop---a newly-minted Harvard Overseer---and
our students, ·post-docs, and technicians.
lacked discernable practical goals.
Most of our experiments
We followed our hunches,
working with cancer viruses from chickens and mice, supported
largely by grants from the NIH.
patterns emerged.
Eventually, over many years,
We had learned that cancer genes in viruses are
�••
'
....
derived from
norm~l
cellular genes---some of the genes that guide
our growth and development.
These genes,
now called oncogenes,
undergo the mutations that are the defining events m cancer.
Obscure viruses from experimental animals had in this way allowed
us to touch directly the heart of human cancer.
A path to
understanding. had been opened.
Like researchers in all fields, I have also known disappointment,
One example was especially
boredom, surprise, and even irony.
instructive.
The painful reality of cancer has always loomed in the
background of my work, because my mother and her mother died of
breast cancer.
·For this reason,
for many years my lab studied a
virus that causes breast cancer m mice, in hopes of finding relatives
of human breast cancer genes.
Ultimately, we discovered
interesting genes that guide formation of the brain and other organs.
But, in this case, they don't appear to be involved in human cancer of
any kind.
There is no simple road map for this kind· of research.
In 1989, our discovery of oncogenes was publicly recognized with
the award of a Nobel Prize.
Four years later, when President
Clinton and Secretary Shalala invited me to become the Director of
the NIH, I could hardly say no.
My indebtedness was deep.
The
chance to repay it with public service has been gratifying.
This new job has given me a deeper appreciation of the measured
pace of progress. in medical research.
Every morning, on the way to
my office, I cross the portico from which Franklin Roosevelt
�dedicated the first NIH builqings on a late fall day in 1940.
His
paralyzed legs braced with metal, his energies worn down by his
third Presidential campaign, his mind focused on the World War
already being waged in Europe, FDR made a powerful statement
about medical research:
"The total defense, which this Nation seeks, [he said] involves a
deal more than building airplanes, ships, guns and bombs.
great
We
cannot be a strong Nation unless we are a healthy Nation.
And so
we must recruit not only men and materials but also knowledge and
science in the service of national strength."
Roosevelt's optimism about medical research seems, in retrospect,
amazing.
Doctors could not prevent or treat the poliovirus
infection that had paralyzed him nearly twenty years earlier.
Franklin Enders and vaccines were still in the future;
John
the main
therapies were iron lungs and warm baths.
· Most of the staples of
modern medicine were also still unknown.
Antibiotics.
replacements.
Pre-natal testing.
Hormone
Effective drug therapies for psychotic illnesses.
Coronary bypass surgery and artificial joints.
Also in the future were medications that could have lowered FDR's
blood pressure and perhaps forestalled the stroke that killed him
less than five years later, at the now relatively young age of sixty
three.
Still, FDR's optimism proved to be justified.
Even before the War
was over, the chemical synthesis of quinine improved treatment of
�malaria for soldiers _in the Pacific, and the manufacturing -of Fleming's
penicillin effectively controlled wound infections for the first time m
the history of warfare.
Following the War, inspired by these
successes, the Federal government made unprecedented investments
in many fields of science, through the NIH and other agencies.
These investments have been essential for the vitality of American
.
.
science ever smce.
Polio vaccmes and other early successes that encouraged public
enthusiasm for research are now the stuff _of legends.
Let's consider
a more recent and less famous success that gives a different
perspective on the pace of progress.
About two months ago, as I
began to worry about this talk, the senior Senator from
Massachusetts, a member of the Harvard Class of 1956 and of our
Senate authorizing committee, paid a visit to the NIH.
He and I were
sitting on a pediatric ward in our research hospital in Bethesda,
listening to a 27 year old blind man who looked like a skinny 8 year
old boy.
The patient was born with a disease called cystinosis,
having inherited one damaged gene from each parent.
In this very
rare condition, the amino acid cystine cannot be removed from small
sacs within his cells.
As a result, cystine accumulates and forms
crystals in those sacs, damaging the kidneys, eyes, and other tissues.
The patient told us how he was rescued from death by a kidney
transplant at the age_ of 10, gradually lost his vision, and has lived
with chronic pam.
brothers and sisters.
Senator Kennedy asked whether he had
The patient replied, quite matter-of-factly,
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that two older brothers had _died from the disease when he was very
young, because kidney transplants were not yet available.
So he
felt fortunate to have been born recently enough to benefit from a
life-saving transplant---the procedure pioneered by the Harvard
surgeon, Joseph Murray (who, as it happens, spoke to the Medical
School graduates today).
The patient was also glad that affected
children born yet more recently could avoid the kidney disease
altogether;
a recently-developed medication prevents formation of
the crystals.
A few minutes later a normal looking, eleven year old
boy who had inherited the same disorder bounded into the room and
spoke animatedly about sports, hobbies, school---and about the
unpleasant taste of the medicine he had been taking nearly all his
life.
This episode embodies many of my messages today:
the message that science can improve lives in ways that are elegant
in design and moving in practice;
that the Federal government, much
maligned in current politics, can be a powerful force for public
benefit;
that the government can work productively with
universities, where the cellular defect in cystinosis was studied, and
with industries, where the new drug was manufactured; and, finally,
that progress in medical science occurs at a pace that may seem slow
at the time to desperate parents, but astoundingly rapid in
retrospect.
Just consider:
in the space of a generation, this lethal
disease was made survivable with transplants, then curable with
drugs.
�...
· Despite such
triumph~,
we have a long way to go.
Yes, we can treat
cystinosis and a few other genetic diseases, but there are thousands
of inherited conditions we do not even understand.
Yes, we have
controlled polio and smallpox, but we are now struggling around the
world with a new and intractable virus, HIV, and worried about
invasions by exotic viruses, like Ebola and Lassa Fever.
Yes, we can
treat most bacterial infections with penicillin and other antibiotics,
but many bacteria have now become resistant to what were once our
most effective drugs.
Yes, we have dramatically reduced the death
rates for heart attacks and strokes, but we are still seeking ways to
repair the hearts and brains damaged by poor blood flow.
Yes, we
know the . mutant genes responsible for many cancers, but we haven't
transformed that knowledge into better therapies.
Yes, we have
improved the well-being of most people in the industrialized
countries, but malaria, childhood diarrhea, and tuberculosis are still
common in the developing world.
And, yes, we have extended the
average life span in this country to nearly eighty years, but we have
made little progress against the maladies that make advanced age
intolerable for so many people.
Old age and its illnesses are deepening concerns to all of us in this
audience---even to youthful graduates.
When Alexander Fleming
spoke here 51 years ago, only one in seven graduates could expect to
reach the age of 85.
will live past that age.
By conservative estimates, nearly half of you
Today, less than four million Americans are
over 85; when some of you reach 85, there will be about 20 million.
This is not just good news.
Today the government spends $25
�.. ,
billion each year on medical
by five.
c~re
for this group alone.
Multiply that
Add on the costs of care for the much larger group between
65 and 85.
Without more public revenues from taxes,
there will be
little or no money left for other things the government buys,
including the scientific research that might help.
if science
Clearly,
cannot soon relieve the disorders of aging, we will confront some
impossible choices.
Of all these disorders, the one we fear most is Alzheimer's Disease.
We are
right to fear it.
It is a modern polio, and more.
the brain and the personality.
spouses and children ..
It destroys
Its victims become a burden to
Unlike polio, once common and now
eradicated, or cystinosis, rare and now curable, Alzheimer's Disease
both untreatable and common.
IS
Unless things change, nearly half of
us who reach the age of 85 will have signs of the disease.
Until recently, all we knew about Alzheimer's Disease was the ugly
appearance of brain slices under the microscope and the unremitting
deterioration of mental function.
Traditional methods---chemistry
and enzymology, microbiology and immunology, so successful m
approaching polio and cystinosis---provided few clues.
Hope is commg from a new direction.
One day about ten years ago, a
middleaged Massachusetts man in the early
stage~
of Alzheimer's
Disease sought help from Dr. Daniel Pollen, a neurologist at the
University of Massachusetts.
His was not the most common form of
the disease---the onset was early, and his relatives had been
�affected early too.
_With the help of the patient's family,
Dr. Pollen
reconstructed the family lineage and traced the disease back to one
woman, named Hannah, born one hundred and fifty years ago m a
Byelorussian village.
Scientists here at Harvard, at the NIH, m
Canada, and several other places, have tracked several inherited
forms of Alzheimer's Disease to abnormal versions of single genes.
These genes have been isolated in pure form, and we know the
proteins they encode.
So an obvious question: How do we get from Hannah's gene to a
remedy for Alzheimer's Disease?.
I can't tell you.
This, of course, is precisely what
I can't even tell you how to proceed.
All I can do
is predict the pace and flavor of the first moments.
I 1magme a
brilliant young neuroscientist, our new Enders, who is trying to
understand cell survival---perhaps studying a hormone that keeps
nerve cells alive in a dish.
One of her students, working late,
suggests a novel interaction between the hormone and the protein
The results are surprising, but
made from Hannah's gene.
reproducible.
Someone in a lab thousands of miles away learns
about this experiment and tries it in a different way, perhaps in a
mouse model, and gets an even more interesting result.
A young
Salk, seeking an anti-Alzheimer drug at a biotechnology company,
tries to block the interaction.
We are on our way.
What do we need to make these things happen?
Enthusiasm for science.
Money.
New talent.
Strong institutions.
�In that speech from the NIH steps on the eve of World War Two, FDR
knew what we needed:
"All of us are grateful [he said] that we in the United States can still
turn our thoughts and our attention to those institutions of our
country which symbolize peace---institutions whose purpose it is to
save life and not to destroy it."
FDR's confidence then underscores the dilemmas that now plague us
in the aftermath of the Cold War.
The Federal government is broke
and under attack by its own citizens.
Other countries have recently
surpassed our rate of spending for basic research.
Universities and
colleges are more strapped for funds than ever before.
And many
industries are turning away from research investments.
Dr. Who is not the person who can solve these problems.
hope to recruit you to my passions.
to nurture talent.
Instead I
That our institutions must be fit
That new talent is essential to advance science.
And that science, a source of beauty and delight, is also our best hope
for fighting the threats of Alzheimer's and many other diseases.
Several hundreds of you graduating today have already enlisted to
fight these
battles, as future scientists or physicians.
does not engage only those on the front lines.
you.
But the battle
It will affect all of
As worried patients, parents, and caretakers of parents.
taxpayers and good citizens of the world.
As
And as thoughtful
Harvard graduates, who know that science---like "no empire, no sect,
�..
no star"--- can eventually change "the whole face and state of things
throughout the world."
Congratulations to you and good luck.
�The Divinity School
Harvard University
Missy Daniel
Editor, Harvard Divinity Bulletin
Public Affairs Officer
45 Francis Avenue
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
E-mail: mdaniel@harvard.cdu
(617) 496-9147
FAX: (617) 496-3668
�---------------------
Clinton Presidential Records
Digital Records Marker
This is not a presidential record. This is used as an administrative
marker by the William J. Clinton Presidential Library Staff.
This marker identifies the place of a publication.
Publications have not been scanned in their entirety for the purpose
of digitization. To see the full publication please search online or
visit the Clinton Presidential Library's Research Room.
��HARVARD
DIVINITY
BULLETIN
Harvard University • The Divinity School
1996 • Volume 26 • Number I
Detail of woodcut view ofJerusalem designed by Erhard Reuwich from Bernard von Breydenbach, Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam. Mainz, 1486. Harvard College Library. See Nitza
Rosovsky's essay on page I 0.
�Religion & Values
in Public Life
THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY oF VALUEs IN Pusuc LIFE AT HARVARD DIVINITY ScHOOL
Fall 1996
Vol. 5, No. I
Ben Shahn ( 1898-1969). Untitled (Street Scene, Washington Court House, Ohio), 1938. Gelatin silver print Courtesy of the Fogg An· Museum, H01vard University Art
Museums. Gift of Mrs. Bernardo Bryson Shahn.
Love and Money
Thinking Theologically about the Economic
by Jon P. Gunnemann
{What i::d the SiJ.!.n((icance of Christianity for the so/utior~ oftbe social problem of the present day? 71Jis social problem is vast and complicated. It includes the problem qf
the capitalist economic period and q{ the industn'a/ proletan'at created hy it; and qf the J!.rowth of militaristic and bureaucratic giant states; of the enormous increase in
population, which affects co/oYlia/ and world policy; q.f the mechanical technique, which produces enormous masses qf maten'a/ and links up and mobilizes the whole
world for purposes qftrade, but which also treats men and labour like machines. -Ern..o;;t Troeltsch, "7be Social Teach in}!, qfthe Chn'stian Churches," 1911.
ichael Walzer has rightly underscored
recognition and membership as the
chief social goods that so~k:ties distribute-the distribution of all other
social goods either helps to secure
membership or renders membership tenuous. 1 The
M
Adapted from an essay in "Christitm Ethics," copyriMbl
1996 hy Lisa Sowle Cahill and james F. Childress. Used by
penntssion of the Pilgrim Press, Clweland, Ohio.
1
Michael Walzer, Spheres ofjustice (Basic Books, 19H3).
r.mge of possible social and institutional patterns for
securing membership is historically and culturally
immense. In a society where free markets play a central role, private property is the central institution for
securing membership, the basis of political franchise
and other rights. But as Marx and many others have
pointed out, private property has historically
excluded as many or more than it has included. ll
would be possible, of course, to "unbundle" the various rights actually packaged in a given understanding
of private property, detcnnine which are essential to
membership in a market society, and .then universalize them (this is what Marx tried to do). For example,
in America the right to income, dwelling, use for production, alteration, and transfer are all packaged confuseclly in the right to private property. If income is
considered a necessal)' if not sufficient condition for
membership in a market society, then there would
have to be something like a guaranteed annual
income, a proposal lhat in fact originaled with Milton
Friedman, an economist who favors free markets. 2
(conlinued on followin!!. paj!,e)
�
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Terry Edmonds
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Office of Speechwriting
James (Terry) Edmonds
Date
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1995-2001
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<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/36090" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
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2006-0462-F
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Terry Edmonds worked as a speechwriter from 1995-2001. He became the Assistant to the President and Director of Speechwriting in 1999. His speechwriting focused on domestic topics such as race relations, veterans issues, education, paralympics, gun control, youth, and senior citizens. He also contributed to the President’s State of the Union speeches, radio addresses, commencement speeches, and special dinners and events. The records include speeches, letters, memorandum, schedules, reports, articles, and clippings.
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Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
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635 folders in 52 boxes
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Harvard Commencement – NIH [National Institute of Health] Director [1]
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Office of Speechwriting
James (Terry) Edmonds
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2006-0462-F
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Box 35
<a href="http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/assets/Documents/Finding-Aids/2006/2006-0462-F.pdf" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7763294" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
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Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
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7763294