ProfileIn May 2020, Dr. FrancIs collIns, the long-
time head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH),
was called to the White House to meet with Jared
Kushner, the then President’s son-in-law and adviser,
and Dr. Deborah Birx, the head of the White House
Corona virus Task Force. A few weeks earlier, Con-
gress had given the NIH $1.5 billion to try to speed
up the process of developing new diagnostic tests for
COVID-19, and the White House, which was dubious
about increasing the rate of testing, wanted to know
more about what the NIH was doing.
Collins is the boss of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Dis-
eases, but during the pandemic he has mostly taken a
back seat when it comes to media. It’s not that Collins
isn’t a great communicator; he’s known for his abil-
ity to talk about science at any level. But he did not
wish to become an object of White House attention.
So when he met with Kushner, “I did my best to try to
describe what we were doing in a way that it wouldn’t
attract a lot of desire on their part to interfere,” says
Collins. “It was really technical and really geeky.”PUTTING FAITH
IN SCIENCE
Francis Collins, the devout
director of the National Institutes
of Health, fights one virus while
preparing for the nextBY BELINDA LUSCOMBE