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During the coronavirus pandemic, Collins has been on the front line urging Americans to wear masks and get vaccinated. While Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has become the most visible advocate for the administration’s vaccination efforts, the Biden administration has increasingly put Collins on network broadcasts to urge vaccinations and defend the recall strategy .
“This is how it should be,” Collins said of the Food and Drug Administration’s decision late last month to limit boosters to certain vulnerable populations for now, despite the commitment of the Biden administration that boosters would be widely launched by September 20. “Science sort of in a very transparent way, looking at data from multiple places, our country, other countries, and trying to make the best decision yet,” he said on “Face” the Nation ”from CBS.
Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, praised Collins’ contributions to biomedical science, writing on Twitter: “I am saddened to see him step down, I want to express my deepest appreciation for decades of leadership.”
Raised on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley, Collins became fascinated by the emerging field of genetics after undergraduate studies in chemistry at the University of Virginia and graduate studies at Yale. He enrolled in the University of North Carolina School of Medicine at Chapel Hill, then held positions at Yale and the University of Michigan, ultimately identifying genes for cystic fibrosis and other disorders.
Collins spoke at length about his conversion from atheism to Christianity and wrote a book in 2006 titled “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence of Belief.” A year later, he founded the BioLogos Foundation, a group that aims to reconcile religion and science and supports that God created the world through evolution.
In 2009, he left the organization after President Barack Obama appointed him head of the NIH and was sworn in after being unanimously confirmed by the Senate.
During his tenure, Collins had drawn the ire of anti-abortion groups who opposed his support for the use of fetal tissue in medical research, but came out politically unscathed. An immensely popular figure on Capitol Hill, Collins has also made efforts to reach out to the religious community throughout his career, which continued during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“For someone who is a believer, this is what you might call an answer to prayer,” he told Religion News Service last month, referring to the coronavirus vaccine. “If we have all prayed to God to somehow deliver us from this terrible pandemic, and what is happening is that these vaccines are being developed that are safe and effective, well, why not you say, “Thank you, God” and roll up your sleeve?
In 2017, then-President Donald Trump asked Collins to remain director of the NIH, as did President Joe Biden after taking the White House in 2020.
Prior to that, he headed the National Human Genome Research Institute and oversaw the International Human Genome Mapping Project, which was completed in 2003. The work led President George W. Bush to award Collins the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.
“This monumental advance in scientific knowledge began to unravel some of the great mysteries of human life and created the potential to develop treatments and cures for some of the most serious illnesses,” the White House said at the time. .
Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.
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