Modi meets Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus, discusses holistic health

NEW YORK – India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, currently on a visit to the US discussed ways of improving his country’s public health and possibilities of enhanced cancer research with Nobel Laureate for medicine, Professor (Dr.) Harold Varmus.

Prof. Varmus, who is also the Director of US National Cancer Institute, discussed issues related to public health, sanitation, malnutrition and immunization with Modi.

Varmus who did his internship in northern India’s city of Bareilly in the 1960s, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology (Medicine) for his discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes in 1989.

In a half hour long interaction on September 26, the two discussed how medicine has evolved since the 1960s.

Modi also inquired about possibilities of research in India, the need for greater focus on partnership between developed institutes elsewhere and in India, about public health issues, about diabetes, obesity and their impact on cancer.

Briefing the media, Syed Akbaruddin, Spokesperson of India’s Ministry of External Affairs said, “The Prime Minister invited him to visit India on a regular basis. The professor congratulated Modi on the laws in India on anti-smoking.”

According to Modi, research on cancer in developing countries could benefit the entire world as there are some peculiarities in cancer that are unique to developing countries.

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