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
Francis Collins quotes about
average type-2-diabetes risk
[The tests agreed] that I was at higher risk than the average person for Type 2 diabetes, which is what my lab works on. In fact, some of the things they were testing for were variants that we had discovered.
consider historians profound responsibility turning
What a profound responsibility it is to do this work. Historians will consider this a turning point.
bizarre quirky
For delightfully quirky descriptions of bizarre neurological syndromes that teach us a lot about how the brain works, there is no match for Oliver Sacks.
believe broad faith learned scares scientists serious
I actually do not believe that there are any collisions between what I believe as a Christian, and what I know and have learned about as a scientist. I think there's a broad perception that that's the case, and that's what scares many scientists away from a serious consideration of faith.
concerns expressed genome human information might overseeing public scientist understanding ways
As a Christian, but also as a scientist responsible for overseeing the Human Genome Project, one of my concerns has been the limits on applications of our understanding of the genome. Should there be limits? I think there should. I think the public has expressed their concern about ways this information might be misused.
billion brain certain heart human kidney learned letters organ pumps
The brain is the most complicated organ in the universe. We have learned a lot about other human organs. We know how the heart pumps and how the kidney does what it does. To a certain degree, we have read the letters of the human genome. But the brain has 100 billion neurons. Each one of those has about 10,000 connections.
body cancer causes cell disease grow mistakes somewhere start
Cancer is a disease of the genome. And that's what happens. You make mistakes in a cell somewhere in your body that causes it to start to grow when it should've stopped, and that's cancer. And those mistakes are mistakes of DNA.
almost avoid based biologist books conspiracy discuss fact full imply point reasonable shelves
The shelves of many evangelicals are full of books that point out the flaws in evolution, discuss it only as a theory, and almost imply that there's a conspiracy here to avoid the fact that evolution is actually flawed. All of those books, unfortunately, are based upon conclusions that no reasonable biologist would now accept.
atheist became beyond chemistry graduate life physics quantum seemed
I became an atheist because, as a graduate student studying quantum physics, life seemed to be reducible to second-order differential equations. Mathematics, chemistry and physics had it all. And I didn't see any need to go beyond that.
access business cardinal decide exceptions explicit gaining information nobody principle requiring sees stray terms unless
A cardinal principle that we must not stray from - no exceptions - is that your genetic information is your business in terms of who sees it. Nobody should be gaining access to that information without your explicit permission, and nobody should be requiring you to take a genetic test unless you decide that that's what you want to do.
faith hear music notes plus requires revelation spirit
Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page.
area disease expertise fortunate found genes genetics human team
My own area of expertise is the genetics of human disease. I was fortunate to be part of the team that found the genes for cystic fibrosis, and Huntington's disease and neurofibromatosis.
based information somebody straw supposed
If you are looking for a needle in a haystack, and somebody has already cataloged all the straw in the haystack, when you get to that needle you will recognize it's different than what was supposed to be there based on all that computerized haystack information that had been predetermined for you.
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.