Nobel Prize winner Dr. Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, speaks on "The Future of Science in America" from Cornell University's Statler Auditorium. The challenge to science posed by religiously-based opposition to evolution raises profound questions about public policy and what we teach. Yet, it is but one manifestation of a much broader set of tensions in America between science on the one hand, and on the other politics and culture. This program will feature substantial exerpts of Dr Varmus's Atkins lecture followed by a live conversation moderated by David Skorton with Harold Varmus and other guests. Together, they will explore the issues raised in the earlier address. The audience will have an opportunity to ask questions. In addition to the Nobel Prize he received jointly with J. Michael Bishop in 1989 for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, Varmus also is the former director of the National Institutes of Health. While there, he became a champion of an open access system for scientific papers, advocating that scientists, rather than journal editors, should have control over the distribution of their research. Since January of 2000, he has served as president and chief executive officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The lecture is made possible by a grant from the David R. and Patricia D. Atkinson Forum in American Studies at Cornell, a program that seeks to bring to campus the best that America has to offer in the arts.

Nobel Prize winner Dr. Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, speaks on "The Future of Science in America" from Cornell University's Statler Auditorium. The challenge to science posed by religiously-based opposition to evolution raises profound questions about public policy and what we teach. Yet, it is but one manifestation of a much broader set of tensions in America between science on the one hand, and on the other politics and culture. This program will feature substantial exerpts of Dr Varmus's Atkins lecture followed by a live conversation moderated by David Skorton with Harold Varmus and other guests. Together, they will explore the issues raised in the earlier address. The audience will have an opportunity to ask questions. In addition to the Nobel Prize he received jointly with J. Michael Bishop in 1989 for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, Varmus also is the former director of the National Institutes of Health. While there, he became a champion of an open access system for scientific papers, advocating that scientists, rather than journal editors, should have control over the distribution of their research. Since January of 2000, he has served as president and chief executive officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The lecture is made possible by a grant from the David R. and Patricia D. Atkinson Forum in American Studies at Cornell, a program that seeks to bring to campus the best that America has to offer in the arts.