Photo: Francis Collins, by NIH Image Gallery, via Flickr.

Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH),has just announcedhis intention to step down at the end of 2021 after more than 12 years heading the agency. The accolades are already rolling in. Noted evangelical political commentator David French, for example, rushed to praise Collins as a national treasure.

But Collinss real legacy is anything but praiseworthy, and the tendency of figures in the faith community to ignore his real record is far from admirable.

This year of all years should have made the truth about Francis Collins clear. Last month, documents were released suggesting that top National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials may haveliedwhen they denied that the NIH had funded gain of function research in Wuhan, China, that could have resulted in a pathogen that could infect humans.

After reviewing the documents, Rutgers University biologist Richard Ebright had a blistering response: The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement are untruthful.

It was another blow to the reputation of Collins in a year when his agency has faced multiple scandals and controversies.

Among evangelical Christians and other people of faith in America, Collins has long been the equivalent of a rock star. But Collinss days of glory as a non-partisan role model, especially for the faith community, may be numbered and its not just because of the latest scandal over the origins of COVID-19.

In recent months, Collinss agency has become embroiled in controversies over its funding of stomach-churning medical experiments involving body parts harvested from aborted babies. The disclosures about the experiments followed Collinssrepealearlier this year of restrictions on the use of aborted fetal tissue in NIH-funded research.

Collins has also stirred controversy with his increasingly shrill attacks on unvaccinated Americans and his support for harsh mandatory vaccination policies that will require the firing of employees who choose not to be vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine.

The former head of the Human Genome Project, Collins catapulted to fame (and the cover ofTimeMagazine) in 2000 with the announcement of a working draft of the sequence of the human genome.He then became a hero to many Christians with the publication in 2006 of his bookThe Language of God, which recounted his journey from atheism to Christianity.

In an increasingly polarized national environment, Collins is one of the rare heads of a major federal agency to serve under both Republican and Democratic Presidents. Appointed by President Obama to head the NIH in 2009, Collins continued in that role under President Trump and now President Biden. He has regularly drawn praise from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. At gatherings of evangelical Christians, he has been known to strum the guitar and sing worship songs and receive the adoration of attendees. At one 2019 eventit was reportedthat conference participants lined up for selfies with him.

In 2020, Collins wasawarded the prestigious Templeton Prize, worth more than $1.3 million, for his work integrating science and faith. Previous recipients of the prize have included Mother Teresa, John Polkinghorne, Charles Colson, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Among secular as well as religious journalists, Collins often receives what verges on fawning treatment. A writer forThe New Yorkergushedthat Collins is a model of geek cool. He likes big, noisy motorcycles, and, despite a mild manner, he is famously unself-conscious. At the unlikeliest moments, he will strap on a guitar and accompany himself in song, often a tune he has composed for the occasion.

This year, however, Collinss reputation has taken continued beatings, not just because of evasive answers about the role of the NIH in gain-of-function research in China, but also because of publicity around NIH-funded experiments that many Americans, especially people of faith, would find horrific.

In May, reports surfaced aboutmacabre NIH-funded experimentsthat utilized body parts collected fromaborted human fetuses to createhumanized mouse and rodent models with full-thickness human skin.For the experiments, researchersat the University of Pittsburghcut into tiny pieces human fetal spleen, thymus, and liver organs and then transplanted the tissues and hematopoietic stem cells into irradiated mice. Researchers also sliced off skin from the scalp of the aborted babies and then grafted the fetal skin onto the mice. In the words of the scientists: Full-thickness human fetal skin was processed via removal of excess fat tissues attached to the subcutaneous layer of the skin, then engrafted over the rib cage, where the mouse skin was previously excised.

The body parts used for these experiments were harvested from aborted human fetuses with a gestational age of 18-20 weeks. By that age, an unborn baby hasbrain wavesand abeating heart. He canhear sounds and move his limbs and eyes, and his digestion system has started to work.In other words, the human fetuses whose organs were harvested for this NIH-funded research were well-developed tiny humans, not blobs of undifferentiated cells.

In August, an additional project funded by the NIH came to light thanks to documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Judicial Watch and the Center for Medical Progress. The lawsuit was filed after Collinss NIH dragged its feet in responding.According to Judicial Watch, the documents show that theNIH has provided nearly $3 million in tax dollars to support a fetal organ harvesting operation by the University of Pittsburgh in its quest to become a Tissue Hub for human fetal tissue ranging from 6 to 42 [!] weeks gestation.

David Daleiden, president of the Center for Medical Progress,commented: The NIH grant application for just one of Pitts numerous experiments with aborted infants reads like an episode ofAmerican Horror Story. Infants in the womb, some old enough to be viable, are being aborted alive and killed for organ harvesting, in order to bring in millions of dollars in taxpayer funding.

Daleiden furtherallegedthat NIH funding was used to underwrite labor induction abortions, where the baby is pushed out of the mother whole and then killed to obtain the desired tissues. In other words, the NIH was facilitating a process where babies, some of the age of viability, [are] to be delivered alive, and then killing them by cutting their kidneys out.

Francis Collins self-identifies as an evangelical Christian, and most evangelicals as well as faithful Catholics regard abortion as the destruction of innocent human life.

So how has Collins responded to these revelations? With horror? With a pledge to investigate? With a promise to stop taxpayer funding of such research?

Since early August, Ive repeatedly tried to get Collins to answer questions about these NIH funded experiments using aborted fetal organs and tissues.Does Collins support this research funded by his agency? Does he have any ethical objections to it? How does he personally justify the research given his religious convictions? I repeatedly emailed these and other questions to the media contacts for the NIH Office of the Director.

The response? His office has refused to answer.

But its not just NIH research involving humans that has been raising controversy this year. In recent months, Collinss NIH has come under fire for fundingabusive medical experiments on dogsthat critics say were unnecessary as well as barbaric. The experiments were funded by the NIH division headed by Anthony Fauci, but that division is under the ultimate oversight of Collins. In late August, 15 members of Congresssent a letterraising questions about the research.

Again, I tried to get a response from Collins about this latest controversy. Again, he refused to respond to questions.

Ironically, while Collins is AWOL when it comes to answering basic questions about the research his agency is funding, he is more than willing to speak out on other topics, especially COVID-19, where he is now becoming a polarizing figure to many because ofincreasingly shrill advocacy of compulsory vaccination as well as his demonization of those who choose not to take a COVID-19 vaccine.

At the end of April,Collins claimedthat he would not require NIH employees to get vaccinated, and he seemed to argue for a positive approach of selling the benefits of vaccines rather than demonizing the unvaccinated or engaging in finger-wagging. Yet by early August his public posture had changed. He was nowcheerleading for compulsory vaccine requirementsimposed by private businesses as well as enthusiastically overseeing compulsory vaccinations for the very workers at the NIH that he earlier said would not face compulsory vaccination.

After President Bidens speech in September declaringwar on the unvaccinated, Collins ramped up his own rhetoric.In an appearance on MSNBC after Bidens speech, Collins firstsuggestedunvaccinated people were selfish, declaring that this is really an occasion to think about loving your neighbor, not just yourself.

Collins then branded both unvaccinated people and politicians who dont favor vaccine mandates as killers on the wrong side of history. Dismissing their views as merely a philosophical political argument that is part of the culture war, Collins complained that this philosophical political argument is killing people, including, Im sad to say, some children. We have to get past this if we really have a future as a nation.

I would like to say particularly to those leaders who are on the wrong side of this, what Lincoln said one time, Collins declared. Citizens, we will not escape history. Do you want to be looked at in the lens of that backward look ten years from now and defend what you did when in fact, we are losing tens of thousands of lives that didnt have to die?

A question for Collins: Is attacking your fellow citizens (including many fellow Christians) as heartless killers because they disagree with you on either vaccinations or vaccine mandates an example of loving your neighbor?

Whatever one thinks about COVID-19 vaccinations, Collinss over-the-top rhetoric demonizing those he disagrees with as killers is beyond the pale, especially for someone who wears his Christianity on his sleeve. As I have writtenelsewhere, his rhetoric is also based on several falsehoods.

So just how far is Collins willing to go to push coercive medicine? Thats an interesting question.

In my home state of Washington, the governor has issuedan emergency orderthat will compel private religious schools and day care centers as well as other private businesses to fire employees later this month if they wont get vaccinated. While there technically is a route for religious exemptions, it is so narrow and onerous that many religious people may not qualify.

Its now being suggested in some states that discharged employeeswont be able to get unemployment benefits. Perhaps the idea is that if the unvaccinated dont die of COVID they can die of starvation instead.

As if that werent bad enough, the unvaccinated face the denial of medical care. Also in my home state, the University of Washington medical system is now apparently denyingorgan transplantsto patients who are unvaccinated, even if those patients have a credible medical reason for not having the vaccinations.

This is pure, unadulterated social Darwinism: Brand a whole class of people as biologically unfit (in this case, the unvaccinated) and then make sure they cant receive medical care, hold jobs, or basically survive. Heap scorn on them, demonize them as killers, and stir up hatred against them so other people begin to abuse them. If Collins is truly concerned about the judgment of history, he should read a little more widely about the sorry results of demonizing entire classes of people as the enemies of society.

Let me be clear: I am not arguing here about whether people ought to get COVID-19 vaccinations, or whether those vaccinations are helpful. For the record, depending on ones risk profile, I think vaccinations are in a persons best interest. The issue is whether in the name of vaccination people should be stripped of their livelihoods, denied medical care, and demonized as enemies of society. In any morally sane universe, the policies being proposed are as immoral as they are unprecedented.

So does Francis Collins endorse depriving unvaccinated people of their right to work and to support their families? Does he endorse denying them unemployment insurance? Does he go even further and endorse denying medical care to the unvaccinated?

I again asked Collins media relations staff for answers. Again, crickets.

Although Collins likes to tout his personal faith, he appears to have very little concern for any sort of conscience rights of fellows religious believers who disagree with him.After all, he dutifully served in a previous administration that repeatedly weakenedconscience protectionsfor medical workers opposed to abortion and thatviolated federal lawby turning a blind eye when California mandated abortion coverage in all private insurance plans.

It might also be noted that as late as December 2020, Collins was still urging thatmost churches should not meet in person, even implying that they shouldnt do sountil the summer or fall of 2021.

And his current promotion of compulsory vaccinations seemingly has no qualifiers. At least, he isnt talking about any.

Collins hasconcededthat various COVID-19 vaccines used cell lines originally derived from an aborted fetus in either their production or testing, which is one reason some people have moral qualms about the vaccines. Yet you wont find Collins advocating for the conscience rights of these people. In fact, Collins has been silent in the face of attacks on religious exemptions for vaccines.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether the use of abortion-derived cell lines is a moral deal-killer for the vaccines. But thats the point: Reasonable people candisagreeabout what violates their conscience. The test of support for religious liberty is not whether you only support the right of people who agree with you.

Not being willing to stand up for the conscience rights of others to determine their own medical treatment is not morally neutral. It is a moral failure. In the words of theCatholic Bishops of Colorado, A person is morally required to obey his or her conscience, and others should respect the right of others to follow their conscience.

Alas, for those who have followed Francis Collins closely over the years, his current failures of moral leadership come as no surprise. As I will discuss in an upcoming article, Collinss career has been one long testament to moral cowardice and confusion.

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The Appalling Moral Failure of Francis Collins - Discovery Institute

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