Benacerraf Considered

Nobel Laureate Dr. Baruj Benacerraf, Fabyan Professor of Comparative Pathology at the Medical School, is one of three candidates being considered by the Reagan administration for the directorship of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Washington Post reported yesterday.

An official at the Health and Human Services Department in Washington said yesterday that Richard S. Schweiker, secretary for the department, would submit a nomination to President Reagan "within two weeks." The NIH distributes most of its $3.6 billion annual budget towards medical research.

Benacerraf shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1980 for his work on genetically determined cellular mechanisms for communication between body cells.

Benacerraf has been chairman of the Department of Pathology since 1970. Prior to that he served for two years as the chief of the laboratory of immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md.

The Washington Post reported that the other candidates for the post are Dr. Richard Krausse, current head of the NIAID, and Dr. William Danforth, a faculty member at the Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Mo.