Francis Collins
Francis Collins
Francis Sellers Collinsis an American physician-geneticist noted for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project. He is director of the National Institutes of Healthin Bethesda, Maryland, USA...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth14 April 1950
CountryUnited States of America
cancer compassion bears
We are still working with an incomplete compass. The time is right to bring the full power of genomics to bear on the problem of cancer.
christian sunday practice
I'm a serious Christian. I take my faith seriously. I try to practice it every day of the week, not just on Sunday.
tools existence prove
Science's tools will never prove or disprove God's existence.
healing sick interesting
It's interesting when you read the life of Christ how much of his time he spent healing the sick. There must have been a reason for that - he was modelling for us what it is we are intended to do by following his path.
cares exactly guy man preserve save swim urge
If I'm walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don't know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who's drowning?
concept god great message might miracles occur problem standards
I don't have a problem with the concept that miracles might occasionally occur at moments of great significance, where there is a message being transmitted to us by God Almighty. But as a scientist, I set my standards for miracles very high.
otherwise proteins sequence sort
Genes are effectively one-dimensional. If you write down the sequence of A, C, G and T, that's kind of what you need to know about that gene. But proteins are three-dimensional. They have to be because we are three-dimensional, and we're made of those proteins. Otherwise we'd all sort of be linear, unimaginably weird creatures.
bit degree far finished graduate human life quantum rest
I finished up my graduate degree in quantum mechanics, but underwent a bit of a personal crisis, recognizing that I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. It was too abstract, too far removed from human concerns.
carrying claim flowing juices lay somebody stuff tends
Patenting tends to get people's juices flowing when you put the word 'gene' and the word 'patent' in the same sentence. And understandably so. This is stuff we're carrying around - all of us - inside all of our cells. Should somebody be able to lay claim to it?
conversation god manipulate opportunity tune
For me, in my Christian belief, prayer is not an opportunity to manipulate God into doing what you want him to. Prayer is an opportunity to have a conversation with God to try to get in tune with what his will is.
created embryos human recognize safely
If you are in support of in vitro fertilization, then you have to recognize that human embryos are being created in excess of what can be used safely to reimplant for a pregnancy. So they're going to end up being discarded.
convincing evidence gain lose people weight
Many people struggle with losing weight and then regaining it. But there is no convincing evidence that the effort to lose weight actually promotes more weight gain in the long run.
aware choir clear episcopal followed growing local message music pay rest supposed vaguely
Growing up, I was vaguely aware of things that went on in church, because I was in the boys' choir at the local Episcopal church. But I got the clear message that I was supposed to learn music there, and not pay too much attention to the rest of it, and I followed those instructions very carefully.
disease found residency took
I took care of young adults with cystic fibrosis when I was in my residency training and found this to be a disease that was desperately in need of some explanation.