40 Time February 15/February 22, 2021
him. “I think we have actually moved at unprec-
edented speed in everything we’ve done,” he says,
“but I’ve still felt this sense every day that people
are losing their lives as a result of this, and I wish we
could have gone faster.”
Collins Came to faith during the period when
he worked as a physician. He noticed how many
gravely ill people seemed to draw strength from their
beliefs, and when one patient eventually asked him
what he believed, he was disturbed that he didn’t
have an answer. “Atheism for a scientist is really hard
to defend because it’s the assertion of a universal neg-
ative,” he says. “And scientists aren’t supposed to be
able to do that.” A minister directed him to every
brainiac Christian’s favorite writer, C.S. Lewis. Even-
tually, Collins wrote a best-selling book of his own,
The Language of God, in which he argues that scien-
tific discoveries do not preclude the existence of a
Deity. In 2020, he won the $1.3 million Templeton
Prize, which is given to those who investigate the
metaphysical aspects of science.
One standing appointment Collins has kept dur-
ing the pandemic is with his book club, made up
mostly of members of the Christiantelligentsia. Theo-
logians such as Russell Moore and Tim Keller, col-
umnists such as Pete Wehner and David Brooks and
the conservative author Yuval Levin meet monthly,
usually to discuss books about weighty matters of
faith. The theologian N.T. Wright, who’s also a friend
of Collins’, visits when he has a new book out.
While Fauci has been medicine’s public face, Col-
lins has been hitting the faith-based circuit, toting
his “favorite pet rock,” a baseball-size 3-D printed
model of a spiked protein, and preaching science
to believers. One of his life goals is to address the
“long- standing tension between evangelicals and rig-
orous science.” He insists that for a believer, science
is a form of worship. “It’s a glimpse of God’s mind,”
he says, “when you do a scientific experiment.” His
foundation, BioLogos, tries to bridge the two. The
pandemic has shown how much work it has to do.
for all Collins’ aCComplishments and
accolades—including the Presidential Medal of Free-
dom in 2007 and the National Medal of Science in
2008—he is not immune from criticism. “What I
think was disappointing is that science leaders did
not step up to challenge the President more publicly,”
says Lancet editor in chief Richard Horton. “The fail-
ure of the science community to act more robustly
led to a collusion between scientists and politicians,
a collusion that has needlessly cost the lives of hun-
dreds of thousands.” Collins says Fauci did a better
job at speaking out about this than anyone could and
didn’t need anyone else to speak for him.
Under Collins’ watch, the NIH has established
the position of Chief Officer for Scientific Work-
force Diversity and invested in outreach to under-
represented communities in science, yet a recently
published analysis by two researchers argues that the
NIH’s own studies show little improvement has been
made in funding bias. “What I’d blame Francis Col-
lins for is his lack of taking [the NIH studies] seri-
ously,” says professor Michael Taffe of the University
of California, San Diego, psychiatry department, one
of the authors of the paper. Not only does the NIH
fund proportionally fewer Black-led research proj-
ects, the study suggests, but it also funds fewer proj-
ects that look at health issues that are more likely to
affect Black communities. “Everything that’s not ma-
joritarian culture is secondary,” says Taffe.
“I will be the first to say we have failed for the
most part to have our workforce look like our coun-
try,” says Collins. With the lifting of Trump’s Execu-
tive Order banning training on structural racism in
government agencies, he says he hopes as soon as
February to begin meetings on the series of actions
the NIH will be taking to address the imbalance.
The bigger problem, he says, is the racial dispari-
ties in the health of Americans. The corona virus threw
those into sharp relief. It was clear early on that people
from underserved neighborhoods and communities
of color were infected by the virus at a much higher
rate and were more likely to be hospitalized and to die
of it than those in wealthier and white communities.
Collins notes that as a geneticist, he knew this had
nothing to do with biology. So the NIH undertook a
bunch of programs to redress the balance, including
trying to figure out how to get more tests into minor-
ity communities, ensure that vaccine trials were test-
ing as representative a cross section of the country as
possible and, once the vaccines were approved, make
them available and welcome in every neighborhood.
Given the history of medical interventions into
communities of color, the NIH decided it needed to
be proactive about building trust and communica-
tion before the vaccines arrived. Dr. Gary Gibbons,
the director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood
Institute at the NIH, co-led an initiative called CEAL
(Community Engagement Alliance), which built re-
lationships and networks in minority communities
to both hear their concerns and try to address mis-
information about the vaccine and encourage par-
ticipation in trials. “The NIH overall makes quite an
investment in health- disparities research,” says Gib-
bons, “but it’s a work in progress.” Initial figures sug-
gest that Black Americans are getting vaccinated at
much lower levels than white Americans.
Taffe’s solution for the disparity within NIH—to
fund a more diverse range of scientists—is echoed
in other corners of academia. Because Collins has
always favored big, bold plans, like curing diabetes
or Alzheimer’s, some scientists say he overlooks the
key ingredient for breakthroughs, which is funding
innovative scientists. “He’s moved increasingly to-Profile
“
It’s a
glimpse of
God’s mind
when you do
a scientific
experiment.
”