Dr. Francis Collins and our old friend, the corona virusHorrible
news! My runner up for OVCA-battling
hero of recent decades, Dr. Francis Collins, has retired.
Dr. Collins, as you all know, has been Director of NIH for a long
time. Before that, of course, he headed
the “official” effort to decipher the human genome. As NIH Director he directed the NIH thrust to
apply genomics to the search for cures for many human diseases, especially
cancer. That, for instance, we know that
mutations in the BRCA genes can vastly increase a woman’s chance of getting
breast and ovarian cancer largely is the result of research overseen by Dr.
Collins.
Collins also
wrote blogs that I avidly awaited, studied, and reported on. They were always clearly written, easy for a
non-biologist to understand, interesting, and cast light on important doings in
the medical world. Possibly the new
director (not yet chosen) will continue the blog tradition. I hope so, but I doubt they will be up to the
Collins standard.
Dr. Collins also wrote several books, one of which (The
Language of Life) describes the decipherment of the genetic code. He also published innumerable professional
papers. As you might guess, over the years he received
many honors, including membership in the National Academy of
Sciences. He clearly deserves them.
It might surprise
you to learn that Dr. Collins also is a practicing Christian. Apparently like so many young scientists he
began adult life as a confirmed atheist.
His conversion began, as related in his book The Language of God, with an encounter with another pro-faith book,
Mere Christianity, written by the
famous scholar/author C. S. Lewis. I
have read both books several times and seriously pondered their message, but remain
unconvinced. I still am "agnostic", in the
true sense of the word. Perhaps I simply
don’t want to admit the existence of a god that would take away my Linda in
such a cruel and wanton manner. Being an
ordinary human and not a Collins or Lewis, I can’t surmount that barrier.
