Francis S. Collins took the leadership of the National Institutes of Health on Monday, telling the NIH staff his biggest fear centers on the possibility of a renewed decline in federal support for scientific research.
Dr. Collins, a physician and geneticist, assumes the role of director as the agency, the largest source of money for academic research in the United States, is experiencing a financial revival. After giving the agency five years of stagnant budgets totaling just under $30-billion a year, Congress handed the NIH an extra $10.4-billion in this year’s economic-stimulus measure.
Along with many others involved in university research, however, Dr. Collins said he is consumed by the fear that a return to the budget levels of recent years will perpetuate a sense that medical research is not a reliable career path, especially for young college graduates.
“This is probably the one that I worry about the most, the one that wakes me up in the middle of the night,” he told an assembly of NIH employees on their 350-acre tree-lined campus in this northern suburb of Washington.
Dr. Collins, whose appointment by President Obama was confirmed by the Senate on August 7, came to the agency 10 months after the departure of its previous director, Elias A. Zerhouni. Known for his leadership of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Collins served as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH from 1993 to 2008.
Laying Out Goals
On Monday, he listed for his staff five goals for his tenure as director, including ensuring a “stable and predictable” supply of federal research dollars.
The Association of American Universities supports the priority, said a spokesman for the group, Barry Toiv. The stimulus budget is important, “but we share his concern for ensuring that regular appropriations rise at a rate that prevents the kind of drop-off in two years that could discourage researchers and hamstring vital biomedical research,” Mr. Toiv said.
Ann C. Bonham, chief scientific officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges, said she has heard directly from many graduate students and postdoctoral students who are considering changing careers away from medicine because of the uncertainties of federal financial support.
“That would be a huge loss of a generation of our biomedical expertise,” Ms. Bonham said.
Dr. Collins also proposed placing a greater emphasis on the use of advanced technologies in fighting diseases, improving the rate of success in translating scientific discoveries into commercially available medicines and therapies, expanding the involvement of NIH experts in the Congressional debate over the future of American health coverage, and taking a bigger role in helping with international health concerns.
Even with limited federal financial support, the NIH can take some steps to help younger researchers, Dr. Collins said. Speaking with reporters after his address to NIH staff members, he cited the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, which is affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as an example of an institution that puts special emphasis on providing mentors and guiding promising young students.
He also suggested that the NIH pay more attention to lowering the average age at which researchers receive their first grants, which is now around 42.
And he spoke about the need to overcome the “herd mentality” in the grants-review process that too often leads the NIH to approve a safer research proposal over a riskier alternative that has a higher likelihood of failure but a bigger payoff if it succeeds. He expressed admiration for efforts by Dr. Zerhouni to make changes in that direction, such as waiving requirements for preliminary data to help scientists spend more time pursuing unusual paths of research.
He also expressed surprise that nobody in either of Monday’s meetings asked about his religious beliefs. Dr. Collins left the NIH last year and founded the BioLogos Foundation, which describes itself as seeking common ground between science and religion. Without being prompted, he said he quit the group and promised the science-faith issue “will not interfere with my judgments” as NIH director.
