Francis Collins Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• A technological advance of a major sort almost always is overestimated in the short run for its consequences - and underestimated in the long run.

  Francis Collins

  Running, Long, Technological

  "The Covenant" by Peter J. Boyer, www.newyorker.com. September 6, 2010.

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• Nobody gets argued all the way into becoming a believer on the sheer basis of logic and reason. That requires a leap of faith.

  Francis Collins

  Leap Of Faith, Way, Becoming

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• But full sequencing? No. Very hard to interpret. At some point probably we'll all have that opportunity but most of what's there will be stuff that we don't know what to say much about. So it's a great research tool, but for clinical purposes to advise somebody to practice better health maintenance, it's not necessarily gonna be a big one for a while.

  Francis Collins

  Opportunity, Practice, Tools

  Source: www.politico.com

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• As you kind of get over the anxiety about [science and evolution], it actually adds to your sense of awe about this amazing universe that we live in, it doesn't subtract from it at all.

  Francis Collins

  Science, Anxiety, Add

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• I trained initially as a physical chemist, and then, after becoming interested in biology, I went to medical school and learned how to be a physician. So, I'm a physician scientist.

  Francis Collins

  School, Physicians, Becoming

  "Faith & Reason" TV Program Interview, www.pbs.org.

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• In my own experience as a physician, I have not seen a miraculous healing, and I don't expect to see one.

  Francis Collins

  Healing, Physicians, Miraculous

  "Francis Collins: The Scientist as Believer". Interview with John Horgan, ngm.nationalgeographic.com. February, 2007.

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• The blooming of a flower is, in my mind, not a miracle. It's something that we can understand on the basis of molecular biology these days.

  Francis Collins

  Flower, Miracle, Mind

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• What faith has not been used by demagogues as a club over somebody's head?

  Francis Collins

  Clubs, Used

  "Francis Collins: The Scientist as Believer". Interview with John Horgan, ngm.nationalgeographic.com. February 2007.

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• I'm aware there are certain products that are being advertised - food products - with 'no chemicals whatsoever.' Well, that would be pretty hard to arrange, since everything around us is made up of atoms and molecules - chemicals - including ourselves.

  Francis Collins

  Molecules, Atoms, Would Be

  "Francis Collins on Making Life". Interview with Robert Krulwich, www.pbs.org. October 1, 2005.

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• 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.

  Francis Collins

  Cancer, Compassion, Bears

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• A virus is not just DNA; a virus is also packaged up, covered over with a series of proteins in a nice, elegant, well-compacted form.

  Francis Collins

  Nice, Dna, Viruses

  "Francis Collins on Making Life". Interview with Robert Krulwich, www.pbs.org. October 1, 2005.

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• We give our kids vaccinations. That's a biological enhancement that's considered not just acceptable but actually admirable.

  Francis Collins

  Kids, Giving, Enhancement

  Interview with Bob Abernethy, www.pbs.org. July 6, 2006.

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• As a scientist, you're not supposed to make decisions without the data.

  Francis Collins

  Data, Decision, Scientist

  The WGBH Interview, www.pbs.org. 2004.

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• I had the analysis of a million or so SNPs [single nucleotide polymorphisms] just to see what was there. That's partly because I was writing a book about DNA and personalized medicine and I thought it would be a little bit disingenuous to talk about what could be done without actually having the experiment done on yourself.

  Francis Collins

  Book, Writing, Dna

  Source: www.politico.com

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• A lot of people think PMI is the genome project 2.0. No. This is about all the influences on disease - genetics is in there, but the environment is in there as well, health choices, behaviors, all the factors that are important, otherwise we're not doing what we promised we would do - which is in a holistic way look at how people stay healthy or how do they fall ill.

  Francis Collins

  Fall, Thinking, People

  Source: www.politico.com

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• When a drug comes out [that's broadly prescribed] there are going to start to be a lot of people on it [in a million person cohort] and you might get therefore an early signal of something unexpected that hadn't come through in the clinical trials. And I'm sure [drug companies] would love it if, in fact, FDA, recognizing that, would say, OK, maybe you don't have to do your trial with 30,000 people because we're going to find out shortly after registration because we'll have a lot of people taking the drug and we'll be able to see what happened using PMI.

  Francis Collins

  Fda, People, Drug

  Source: www.politico.com

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• I think there are people who's lives have been saved because of the study of the genome.

  Francis Collins

  Thinking, People, Study

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• The problem [with genetic research] is, we're just starting down this path, feeling our way in the dark. We have a small lantern in the form of a gene, but the lantern doesn't penetrate more than a couple of hundred feet. We don't know whether we're going to encounter chasms, rock walls or mountain ranges along the way. We don't even know how long the path is.

  Francis Collins

  Couple, Wall, Dark

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• I'm enormously interested to see where neuroscience can take us in understanding these complexities of the human brain and how it works, but I do think there may be limits in terms of what science can tell us about what does good and evil mean anyway, and what are those concepts about?

  Francis Collins

  Mean, Thinking, Evil

  "N.I.H. Director Francis Collins On Agency Goals". "Talk of the Nation" with Ira Flatow, www.npr.org. September 11, 2009.

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• What wakes me up at night is this next generation and what's happening to them. And they're invariably excited about the science that they're doing, but invariably anxious about where there's a future.

  Francis Collins

  Night, Generations, Next

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• [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.

  Francis Collins

  Average, Type 2 Diabetes, Risk

  Source: www.politico.com

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• The word 'living' has so many connotations that I'm almost reluctant to try to define it scientifically because it sounds as if I'm then downgrading all the other significances of that word.

  Francis Collins

  Trying, Sound, Downgrading

  "Francis Collins on Making Life". Interview with Robert Krulwich, www.pbs.org. October 1, 2005.

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• I've never heard God speak out loud to me. That's not an experience I have had.

  Francis Collins

  Speaks Out, Speak, Loud

  Interview with Bob Abernethy, www.pbs.org. July 6, 2006.

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• A lot of science doesn't require big "ns" but if you're trying to understand something about human health and you're looking at interventions that are not going to be either killing you or making you live forever - they're going to have some tweaking on the outcome - you need big numbers or you don't have enough power.

  Francis Collins

  Numbers, Forever, Trying

  Source: www.politico.com

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• People who are in a position of finding out that they're at risk for some illness, whether it's breast cancer, or heart disease, are afraid to get that information - even though it might be useful to them - because of fears that they'll lose their health insurance or their job.

  Francis Collins

  Jobs, Cancer, Heart

  "Bob Abernethy’s interview with Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health". www.pbs.org. June 16, 2000.

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