MEN OF SCIENCE AND FAITH IN GOD
Francis Collins (1950- )

Benjamin L. Clausen
Geoscience Research Institute

Geoscience Reports 30:8 (Winter 2000).

    Francis Collins received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Virginia in 1970 and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Yale University in 1974. Wishing to improve the quality of human life, rather than just doing arcane research, he earned an MD (with honors) at the University of North Carolina in 1977. An internship and residency in North Carolina and a fellowship in human genetics and pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine followed. During this time he embraced Christianity after reading C.S. Lewis and seeing that religious belief is not necessarily incompatible with rational thought. In 1984 he joined the University of Michigan Medical School and in 1987 became chief of the division of medical genetics. While there in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he and his wife helped start a Baptist church.
    Between 1987 and 1993 Collins was also an investigator for the largest biomedical research philanthropy in the United States. His research with collaborators resulted in several important gene discoveries, e.g., cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis and Huntington's disease.
    In June of 1989, as they were finishing the search for the cystic fibrosis gene, Collins traveled to a small mission hospital in Nigeria with his daughter Margaret, a medical student. During the visit he saved a man's life in a dramatic surgery. After recovering, the patient said, "Dr. Collins, I believe you were sent here just for me, because without you I would have died." Such mission travels are an expression of his faith and provide spiritual fulfillment. 
    Although Collins puts in 100-hour work weeks, he is also a collegial researcher who drives a motorcycle and plays the acoustic guitar.
    In 1988 a 15-year, $3 billion project to sequence the 3 billion bases of human DNA was begun. In April 1993 Collins was appointed as director of the project at the National Center for Human Genome Research. He has a special commitment to hunting down disease genes — the reason the public is willing to pay for the research. This has led to the treatment of hereditary colon cancer by surgery, and, perhaps, the future testing for a predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer.
    Collins is acutely sensitive to the ethical, legal, and social implications posed by the human genome project. He has concerns about possible uses of genetic testing by employers, insurance companies, or even parents who want a child of a certain sex. He supports laws to prevent people from losing health insurance because of genetic discoveries, as happened in the past with sickle-cell anemia. Although intervention for such genetic abnormalities at present is mostly by abortion of the affected fetus, he is "intensely uncomfortable with abortion as a solution to anything."
    Francis Collins avoids imposing his beliefs on others. Scientific American says "the fact that he wears his Christianity on his sleeve is the best safeguard against any potential conflict." His views stem from his belief in a "personal God", and he argues that humans have an innate sense of right and wrong that doesn't arise particularly well from evolutionary theory.
    Collins has a passion for what he is doing, rather than an attitude of "I'm going to get there first." He is driven more by a desire to unravel the mysteries of genetic diseases, than by a need for recognition. He is a trusted collaborator and an effective manager with a collegial leadership style. In addition to being a world-class scientific researcher and a savvy political activist, he is also a compassionate and empathetic physician. His research is not just an intellectual exercise, because the diseases he studies bring to mind the faces of patients he cares about. In his research he is a skeptical prove-it-to-me scientist, but as a serious Christian he displays a deeply religious faith.

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