NIH Director Francis Collins is Leaving With a Warning for Some Politicians

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Before he stepped down on Dec. 19, Dr. Francis Collins was the longest-serving director of the National Institutes of Health since presidents began to appoint them. Installed by President Obama in 2009, he served under three administrations and during his tenure the budget of the NIH, the leading funder of research related to the health of Americans, grew from $30 billion to $43 billion. He is that rare bureaucrat who is also a career scientist; he was instrumental in decoding the genome and will continue to work at the National Human Genome Research Institute lab at the NIH, which has already had some success in the search for genetically-informed solutions to such health issues as cystic fibrosis, type 2 diabetes and progeria. He is also that rare scientist who is a devout christian; he describes DNA as the ‘language of God.’
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This interview has been condensed and edited.

Contents

Is the fact that you’re willing to leave the National Institutes of Health a sign that the COVID-19 crisis is over?
One of the reasons that President Trump was not reelected, some said, was because of his handling of COVID-19. Did you see many differences with the current administration?
Yet polls suggest that a majority of Americans believe that the information coming from public health officials currently is confusing….

Is the fact that you’re willing to leave the National Institutes of Health a sign that the COVID-19 crisis is over?

Oh, I only wish. Science has been amazingly responsive to that challenge. But we’ve had other problems that got in the way, some induced by this virus’s remarkable ability to develop new variants and a lot of it induced by our failure to convince everybody to take advantage of the tools that could have helped them.

One of the reasons that President Trump was not reelected, some said, was because of his handling of COVID-19. Did you see many differences with the current administration?

Yeah, it was clear that this was going to be a circumstance where everything that got done about COVID would be based on what the science suggested was going to give the best outcome. That had not necessarily been the case in the preceding administration. It felt very much like the doors were wide open to exchange of information.