Science - USA (2021-12-24)

Q: Diversity is one area where you wish you’d

made more progress. But NIH recently ended

a policy that some institutes hoped would

help identify high-quality proposals from

Black scientists that just missed the funding

cutoff. Was that because of legal concerns?

A: Exactly. What we must not do in our

efforts to try to right 400 years of wrongs

is put forward solutions that can be readily

attacked as inconsistent with Supreme

Court rulings. We cannot run the risk of a

legal challenge.

Q: How do you feel about your efforts to sup-

port younger, early-stage investigators?

A: We still have a problem that academic

institutes keep trainees in graduate and

postdoc positions too long. But that’s not

a lever that we can totally pull. In terms of

the success rate for a first-time investigator,

we have pushed that up to about 25%. Look

at the numbers. We had 600 early-stage

investigators funded in 2014. The number

for [this year] is about 1400. I would say it’s

progress in the right direction.

Q: Do you think that ARPA-H, the new agency

to accelerate biomedical research, is going

to happen? And should it be a stand-alone

agency rather than part of NIH?

A: I sure hope it happens. There seems to

be enthusiasm in both the House [of Rep-

resentatives] and the Senate. It’s going to

be quite a challenge to stand up a compli-

cated organization like this. NIH is quite

ready to do that while maintaining arm’s

length to ensure a very different culture at

ARPA-H. It is going to have to figure out

the most compelling projects that involve

an opportunity to move something forward

at a pace that otherwise wouldn’t happen.

It seems to me NIH is in a pretty good

place to bubble up those kinds of projects.

Q: NIH has been involved in the Department

of Justice’s China Initiative, which aims to

stop intellectual property theft, because of

concerns that some NIH-funded scientists

have not disclosed foreign funding. Some

investigations have resulted in criminal pros-

ecutions. Is this the right way to handle it?

A: We need to be sure when somebody is

seeking substantial funding from NIH that

they have disclosed their other support. It

is clear there have been egregious incidents

where people had substantial funding,

even shadow labs in another country, [that

they did not disclose]. It’s up to the [fed-

eral prosecutors] to decide if somebody has

broken a law, such as tax law.

Q: You came under fire from scientists in

2020 for suspending a grant to the Eco-

Health Alliance and its subcontractor, the

Wuhan Institute of Virology, to survey bat

coronaviruses. NIH later restored it but with

conditions that EcoHealth said were impos-

sible to meet. Why haven’t you relaxed those

conditions and resumed the grant?

A: The termination of the grant, which

came down as an order from the White

House, was not something that we were

given a choice about. [Since then,] it’s

clear that while the original justification

for the work they were doing was quite

compelling, there have been ways in which

EcoHealth has not been responsive to NIH

requests for information. For instance,

they were supposed to notify NIH if a

certain viral construct they were working

with turned out to have a more than one

log increase in infectivity for a humanized

mouse, which did not happen. So they have

not fully discharged their responsibili-

ties working in an area that’s obviously

fraught with potential for human harm. [In

imposing conditions on the grant,] we’re

treating them like we would any grantee

that has responsibilities and hasn’t lived

up to them.

Q: What won’t you miss about being
NIH director?
A: I won’t miss the nasty politics that
unfortunately seem to surround a lot of
what’s happening right now as a reflection
of the divisiveness in our country. I won’t
miss the slings and arrows being pitched
at NIH, on the basis of political perspec-
tives. I won’t miss getting really horrible,
hateful emails every time I show up on
Fox News. And the things that they’re
quite comfortable saying about me and
my family. I won’t miss 100 hours a week
[of work]. That oftentimes was utterly
exhausting and consuming, but it needed
to be. So I haven’t had much chance to
really stop, reflect, and think and maybe
do some writing. I will be glad to be able
PHOTO: ANNA MONEYMAKER/ to do some of those things. j

THE NEW YORK TIMES

/REDUX

SCIENCE science.org 24 DECEMBER 2021 • VOL 374 ISSUE 6575 1547

NIH’s Collins steps down:

I won’t miss the nasty politics’

Geneticist’s 12-year tenure marked by funding increases,

new initiatives, and battling the COVID-19 pandemic

U.S. SCIENCE POLICY

By Jocelyn Kaiser

F

rancis Collins ended his 12 years as director of the National Institutes of Health

(NIH) on a high note last week, rushing to interviews and being showered with

fond tributes from former presidents and even cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Collins, an affable,

guitar-playing, motorcycle-riding geneticist and physician, steered the $43 billion

agency through three administrations, won budget increases, and launched major

new programs in cancer, neuroscience, and personalized medicine. He also led

NIH’s efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Collins, who is returning to his lab

at NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute, spoke with Science about some

of his tenure’s highs and lows. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

‘