High Price of Freedom

Sorry News for NIMH Head-Hunt Life at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has had its share of bumps lately. The institute, in turmoil over feared cuts in its clinical program, has been without a permanent director since its controversial head, psychiatrist Fred Goodwin, left last spring. A new director was to be named early this year. But that is unlikely now that one of the reported top contenders for the job has died unexpectedly. Stanford University child psychiatrist and genetics researcher Roland Ciaranello, said to be one of the three leading candidates for the job, died early on the morning of 15 December while jogging in Puerto Rico during the annual meeting of the American Congress of Neuropsychopharmacology. He was 51. NIMH officials won't say anything about the status of their head-hunt now, but a source familiar with the search says that the search committee, chaired by National Institutes of Health (NIH) deputy director Ruth Kirschstein and drug abuse institute head Alan Leshner, had been "very impressed" with Ciaranello. They were not the only ones. "I had hoped he would be chosen, because I thought he would do an excellent job," says University of Iowa schizophrenia researcher Nancy Andreasen, one of the other top contenders. Andreasen says she has not heard from NIMH since Ciaranello's death, "but I've had a lot of practice at this," because she was also under consideration before Goodwin got the job in early 1992. The NIMH source says the search committee is going to take another look at the field of possibilities before submitting its recommendations to NIH Director Harold Varmus-and when that will be no one's saying. Aside from Andreasen, the most likely candidate is said to be psychiatrist William ("Biff") Bunney, a former NIMH researcher now at the University of California, Irvine.