In the summer of 2005, 67-year-old cancer surgeon John Niederhuber was ready for a new chapter in a career spent hopscotching across the country in academic medicine. His wife had died of breast cancer a few years earlier, and his son would soon head off to college. So when Andrew von Eschenbach, director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), asked him to join his staff as a deputy director, Niederhuber left his job as a surgery and oncology professor at the University of Wisconsin, sold his house in Madison, and headed to Washington, D.C.
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