NIH edits F-bomb out of official webcast

The director of the National Cancer Institute delivered an F-bomb during a roundtable with top scientists and doctors earlier this month, but you wouldn’t know it if you watched the official recording.

{mosads}A webcast of the meeting from the National Institutes of Health edited out the expletive, which was uttered by Nobel-prize-winning cancer researcher Harold Varmus.

The discrepancy in the recording was first flagged by Paul Goldberg, the editor of a widely read weekly publication called The Cancer Letter, who also recorded the meeting.

Varmus, who was appointed to his post by President Obama in 2010, had been debating the use of clinical trials with Peter Adamson, chair of Children’s Oncology Group in Philadelphia.

“The bar should be lower, I agree with that. But I think the answer to that is, you know, make up your f—ing mind,” Varmus said, prompting a burst of laugher in the room.

Then another person asks, “What did he just say?”

A spokesman from the NIH told The Washington Post Monday that about 18 seconds were edited from the video.

“The cameraman heard it and flagged it for the people posting the video,” NIH spokesman John Burklow told the Post. “They thought they were following broadcast standards. … This is an unusual situation.”

Varmus was also director of the NIH during the Clinton administration.