Former NIH director Francis Collins retires
Former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins unexpectedly retired on Friday, writing in a statement that employees of the government's biomedical research institution "deserve the utmost respect and support of all Americans."
Why it matters: The noted geneticist's departure comes amid research funding cuts and terminations of probationary workers that have raised concern about an exodus of scientific and technical talent at federal agencies.
Details: Collins didn't give a reason for his retirement and has declined requests for interviews. But his statement referenced a time when "investment in medical research was seen as a high priority and a nonpolitical bipartisan effort."
"When you hear about patients surviving stage 4 cancer because of immunotherapy, that was based on NIH research over many decades. When you hear about sickle-cell disease being cured because of CRISPR gene editing, that was built on many years of research supported by NIH," he wrote.
Collins stepped down as NIH director at the end of 2021 after serving in the role for 12 years under three presidents and being at the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic response.
He returned to his lab to pursue projects that included understanding the causes and prevention of Type 2 diabetes.
Collins made landmark discoveries of disease genes and previously served as director of NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute until 2008.
He led the international Human Genome Project, which culminated in 2003 with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book.
But Collins became embroiled in controversies during and after the pandemic over the agency's funding of gain-of-function research and what critics saw as a heavy handed COVID response.
Emails showed he ordered then-NIAID Director Anthony Fauci to devise a "take down" of the so-called Great Barrington Declaration, a petition authored by a group of scientists that backed allowing COVID to spread among young, healthy people to reach herd immunity faster, per Stat.
Collins later expressed some remorse for not considering the full effects of the government's pandemic policies, saying he and his colleagues had a "very narrow view of what the right decision is."
What they're saying:"Haters will find some email or two of his from the pandemic to smear him. But history will judge him as a legend who helped transform American medicine," Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health and the Biden administration's COVID-19 response coordinator, wrote on X.
President Trump's nominee for NIH director, Jay Bhattacharya, was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
NIH employees publish ‘Bethesda Declaration' in dissent of Trump administration policies
In October 2020, two months before Covid-19 vaccines would become available in the US, Stanford health policy professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and two colleagues published an open letter calling for a contrarian approach to managing the risks of the pandemic: protecting the most vulnerable while allowing others largely to resume normal life, aiming to obtain herd immunity through infection with the virus. They called it the Great Barrington Declaration, for the Massachusetts town where they signed it. Backlash to it was swift, with the director-general of the World Health Organization calling the idea of allowing a dangerous new virus to sweep through unprotected populations 'unethical.' Bhattacharya later testified before Congress that it – and he – immediately became targets of suppression and censorship by those leading scientific agencies. Now, Bhattacharya is the one in charge, and staffers at the agency he leads, the US National Institutes of Health, published their own letter of dissent, taking issue with what they see as the politicization of research and destruction of scientific progress under the Trump administration. They called it the Bethesda Declaration, for the location of the NIH. 'We hope you will welcome this dissent, which we modeled after your Great Barrington Declaration,' the staffers wrote. The letter was signed by more than 300 employees across the biomedical research agency, according to the non-profit organization Stand Up for Science, which also posted it; while many employees signed anonymously because of fears of retaliation, nearly 100 - from graduate students to division chiefs - signed by name. It comes the day before Bhattacharya is due to testify before Congress once more, in a budget hearing to be held Tuesday by the Senate appropriations committee. It's just the latest sign of strife from inside the NIH, where some staff last month staged a walkout of a townhall with Bhattacharya to protest working conditions and an inability to discuss them with the director. 'If we don't speak up, we allow continued harm to research participants and public health in America and across the globe,' said Dr. Jenna Norton, a program officer at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and a lead organizer of the Declaration, in a news release from Stand Up for Science. She emphasized she was speaking in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the NIH. The letter, which the staffers said they also sent to US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH, urged Bhattacharya to 'restore grants delayed or terminated for political reasons so that life-saving science can continue,' citing work in areas including health disparities, Covid-19, health impacts of climate change and others. They cited findings by two scientists that said about 2,100 NIH grants for about $9.5 billion have been terminated since the second Trump administration began. The NIH budget had been about $48 billion annually, and the Trump administration has proposed cutting it next year by about 40%. The research terminations 'throw away years of hard work and millions of dollars,' the NIH staffers wrote. 'Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million, it wastes $4 million.' They also urged Bhattacharya to reverse a policy that aims to implement a new, and lower, flat 15% rate for paying for indirect costs of research at universities, which supports shared lab space, buildings, instruments and other infrastructure, as well as the firing of essential NIH staff. Those who wrote the Bethesda Declaration were joined Monday by outside supporters, in a second letter posted by Stand Up for Science and signed by members of the public, including more than a dozen Nobel Prize-winning scientists. 'We urge NIH and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership to work with NIH staff to return the NIH to its mission and to abandon the strategy of using NIH as a tool for achieving political goals unrelated to that mission,' they wrote. The letter called for the grant-making process to be conducted by scientifically trained NIH staff, guided by rigorous peer review, not by 'anonymous individuals outside of NIH.' It also challenged assertions put forward by Kennedy, who often compares today's health outcomes with those around the time his uncle John F. Kennedy was president, in the early 1960s. 'Since 1960, the death rate due to heart disease has been cut in half, going from 560 deaths per 100,000 people to approximately 230 deaths per 100,000 today,' they wrote. 'From 1960 to the present day, the five-year survival rate for childhood leukemia has increased nearly 10-fold, to over 90% for some forms. In 1960, the rate of measles infection was approximately 250 cases per 100,000 people compared with a near zero rate now (at least until recently).' They acknowledged there's still much work to do, including addressing obesity, diabetes and opioid dependency, 'but,' they wrote, 'glamorizing a mythical past while ignoring important progress made through biomedical research does not enhance the health of the American people.' Support from the NIH, they argued, made the US 'the internationally recognized hub for biomedical research and training,' leading to major advances in improving human health. 'I've never heard anybody say, 'I'm just so frustrated that the government is spending so much money on cancer research, or trying to address Alzheimer's,' ' said Dr. Jeremy Berg, who organized the letter of outside support and previously served as director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH. 'Health concerns are a universal human concern,' Berg told CNN. 'The NIH system is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but has been unbelievably productive in terms of generating progress on specific diseases.'
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Letters to the Editor: When it comes to Trump immigration policy, 'the chaos and cruelty are the point'
To the editor: I couldn't agree more with guest contributor David J. Bier that immigration, like many other things in the country, should be subject to the rule of law ('Voters wanted immigration enforcement, but not like this,' June 5). Prior to the Trump era, the problem was that those responsible for determining immigration policy couldn't reach consensus on what the policy and the law should be. Well, maybe they could have if Donald Trump hadn't intervened to block proposed bipartisan immigration legislation, just to keep the issue alive for the 2024 presidential campaign. Against that backdrop, I'm baffled that Bier doesn't point out that, for President Trump, the chaos and the cruelty are the point. June Ailin Sewell, Marina del Rey .. To the editor: The article raises an important point: Support for border enforcement doesn't justify extreme or harmful policies. Many voters expected a more thoughtful, humane approach, not one that detains families or rushes deportations without considering individual circumstances. These methods don't reflect the values of fairness and dignity most Americans still believe in. People say that tough enforcement is about following the law, but without compassion, the law does more harm than intended. Enforcing immigration policies should involve smart case-by-case judgment and not punishment for everyone. A better approach would balance safety with empathy and recognize that real solutions come from true understanding, not fear. Patricia Geronimo, Redondo Beach This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
San Francisco Chronicle
18 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Americans still have faith in local news − but few are willing to pay for it
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Jennifer Hoewe, Purdue University (THE CONVERSATION) Many Americans say they have lost trust in national news – but most still believe they can rely on the accuracy of local news. In 2023, trust in national newspapers, TV and radio reached historic lows. Just 32% of Americans said they have a 'great deal' or 'fair amount' of trust in these news sources. In 1976, by comparison, 72% of Americans said they had a 'great deal' or 'fair amount' of trust in mass media, including newspapers, TV and radio. And in 2021, the United States ranked last among 46 countries in the trust citizens placed in news outlets. Yet even as the local news industry is declining in the U.S. – more than 3,200 local and regional newspapers have closed since 2005 – Americans still place much more trust in local news than they do in national news. In 2024, 74% of Americans said they had 'a lot of' or 'some' trust in their local news organizations, and 85% believed their local news outlets are at least somewhat important to their community. I am a former local journalist who studies the effects that media content can have on people. Local news can help people understand what their local government is doing, stay aware of day-to-day events, such as local weather, traffic, sports, schools and crime, and even feel a greater sense of community. The decline of local news News organizations in the U.S. have long relied on commercial business practices – such as advertising from companies and subscriptions from readers – that have not been financially sustainable since the mid-2000s. Newspapers' advertising revenue peaked around 2005 and has since rapidly declined from more than $49 billion a year in 2005 to less than $10 billion in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. This drop was driven by the rise of the internet. As a result, the U.S. has lost more than a third of its local and regional newspapers since 2004. Of the local newspapers that remain, 80% are weeklies, as opposed to the daily local newspapers that were more common in the past. With fewer reporters and editors who closely follow the ins and outs of local and state issues, local newspapers are now less able to hold state and local government officials accountable for their actions. Americans also read local newspapers less than they once did. Since 2015, print and digital circulation numbers have dropped 40% for weekday news editions and 45% for Sunday editions among locally focused daily newspapers and their websites. Instead, a larger percentage of Americans now turn to their family members, friends and neighbors than their local news outlets for local news. Despite local news' problems with declining revenue and readership, Americans still trust local news – and this trust crosses partisan lines. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that both Republicans and Democrats think local journalists are in touch with their local communities. The majority of Democrats and Republicans in this survey agreed that local news media 'report news accurately,' 'are transparent about their reporting,' 'cover the most important stories/issues' and 'keep an eye on local political leaders.' This might be because local newspapers can focus on issues people encounter in their day-to-day lives rather than on national politics. In many cases, readers are also able to more easily connect with local journalists in their communities and share story ideas or feedback. People learn about their elected officials and become more informed about local issues from their local news, making it an important component of developing a well-informed public. The current local news environment When people no longer have access to local news sources, or they stop following local news coverage, their faith in the integrity of local elections decreases, their ability to assess elected officials is worse, and voter turnout is lower in local elections, compared with those who do follow, read, watch or listen to local news. Some Americans started relying more heavily on national news when local newspapers shut down, which research shows led to increases in political polarization. My research found that when people trust a partisan-leaning national news source, for example, they're very likely to agree with the partisan-slanted news stories published by that source. As nonpartisan local newspapers have vanished or downsized, partisan-leaning online local news content has cropped up over the past several years. These sites publish news stories that are focused on local issues but approach it with a partisan bent. As a result, people looking for local news information may take in unreliable information that is presented as local news and interpret it as trustworthy. Verifying the origins and intentions of information continues to be paramount for news consumers to make sure they are receiving accurate information – including when it comes to local news.
