Dr Francis Collins leaves NIH leadership

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The Post said Collins, who had been director of the NIH since 2009, would be leaving by the end of the year. The Post quoted “an NIH official” as saying that no decision had been made on an acting director. The position of director of the NIH is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

“There comes a time when an institution like the NIH really does get a new vision, a new leadership,” Collins said, quoted by the Post, without specifying when the interview was conducted. He quoted Collins as saying it was the year for him to take the plunge. “It was the right time,” he told The Post.

Politico cited three anonymous sources as saying that Collins planned to announce Tuesday that he was stepping down.

Collins helped uncover the genetic mutations involved in cystic fibrosis and type 1 neurofibromatosis, which cause tumors on the skin, face and elsewhere. He became Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH in 1993 and remained there until he took over as Head of the entire NIH in 2009. As Director of NHGRI , he ran against private genome entrepreneur Craig Venter to sequence the human genome first and ended up collaborating publicly with his institute’s flashier rival.

As director of the NIH, Collins oversees the world’s largest biomedical agency with a budget of nearly $ 52 billion. The NIH pays nearly $ 42 billion each year for medical research, and 6,000 scientists work in its own laboratories on the vast NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC.

He is the patron of Dr. Anthony Fauci because the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is one of the many institutes that make up the NIH. These include the National Cancer Institute, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and others.

Collins has been a public face advocating for the coronavirus vaccination and common sense measures to control the pandemic such as the use of masks. NIAID, under his leadership, helped develop the Moderna vaccine now used to fight the virus – and funded the years of research that helped get the vaccine ready to roll in months instead of the usual years needed to develop a new one. vaccine

Collins attempted to bridge the growing divide between American conservatives and the scientific establishment by emphasizing his Christian beliefs. “I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between these worldviews,” he wrote in a commentary for CNN in 2007.

Collins, who is 71, also pleaded for more equality and announced in 2019 that he would no longer sit on all-male panels. “Breaking down the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) biases that prevent women and other under-represented groups in science from taking their rightful place in science leadership must start at the top,” he said. stated at the time.

Collins and the NIH did not immediately respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

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