The godly geneticist

When Francis S. Collins tries to understand a disease, there’s a face attached to it. He’s a physician, so his interest is often sparked while treating a suffering patient. But there’s also more than a little faith for the noted geneticist who has unraveled the mysteries behind some of the most terrible maladies afflicting humans, like Huntington’s disease, cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, endocrine cancer and Type 2 diabetes. He has traveled a great distance from his days as a young atheist who thought science alone was truth.
Now 74, Collins sees no such tension, an idea he explores in his latest book: “The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust.” In fact, he credits faith as a driving factor in his remarkable career. He directed the 2,400 scientists in six countries who mapped the human genome, which he calls the “DNA instruction book which seems to me to be the language of God.” He led the National Institutes of Health under Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden before retiring in 2021. He holds the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among other honors.
Retirement is a relative term. Collins still plugs away in his NIH lab, working on treatments for progeria, a devastating syndrome that ages children prematurely; most die in their teens. He’s confident gene editing could cure it. Deseret asked about this research, his book, the place where faith and science meet and the siren call of each.
What’s it like to find a way to treat a disease like cystic fibrosis?
It’s incredibly powerful, gratifying, uplifting and humbling to contribute to that kind of life-saving outcome. I have cried over many stories from individuals with cystic fibrosis, many who were once planning funerals and now are thinking about retirement. And these kids with progeria, they have such a loud clock ticking on their survival. We did over the last 20 years develop a drug that allows many to live into their 20s, but we still lost some along the way. It’s not a cure, which is what one dreams of, what we’re working on. But it is such a privilege to have that intimate connection with people who are suffering with illness, and also to do the research that might help them.
You say science and faith are both vital. How do you define them?
Faith is the evidence of things not seen, to quote Hebrews. It is confidence without absolute proof of the existence of something transcendent that goes beyond our simple ability to measure things in the natural world. Science, on the other hand, is a reliable, highly productive way to discover truth about the world and how it operates, from the tiniest particle to far-flung galaxies. Science can teach us about natural events that are part of creation.
In your book, you distinguish both from truth. Can you expand?
Truth is the most complicated concept. There are truths that would have to be the way they are in any imaginable universe: Two plus two equals four. The area of a circle is pi r squared. That’s not something that might be true for you, but not for me. It just is. Then there are established facts determined through science or history. There was a man on the moon in 1969; that really happened. That is true. In some areas where things are possibly true but not confirmed, it is reasonable to disagree. Is there dark matter in the universe? A lot think so. But we’ve never measured it. Further out, you’re in the zone of pure opinion, which nobody should call truth: Dogs are better than cats. People can disagree and they should. That’s what makes our society lively. But the truth I want to talk about is in those categories of established facts, where you can’t decide you don’t believe something because you don’t like it. Truth doesn’t care how you feel.
Are trust and truth the same?
No. We are capable of trusting things that are false; it happens all the time. Part of our crisis at present is assigning trust to sources that don’t deserve it: the latest post on social media, for instance. The other part is refusing to trust expertise that may not be the answer you want.
Is there a hierarchy to these four concepts?
They’re all tied in together. They’re all essential for a stable, loving society; you have to be anchored to what truth is, to what science can teach you about the natural world, to what faith can teach you outside of things science can help you with, like is there a God? Those are not questions where science has anything to offer, but they’re important. They all feed into rational decisions about what sources to trust so that we make societal and individual decisions that promote our flourishing.
Why do so many see faith and science as mutually exclusive?
They operate in different domains. You can see the natural world, you can measure it, you can do science on it to establish facts. The spiritual world is different. If you’re a strict atheist, you would say it’s irrelevant. I know that perspective: When I was a graduate student studying chemistry, I had no use for any discussion about things that couldn’t be measured scientifically. I ran into all sorts of problems as a medical student facing life and death situations and realizing my materialistic approach had no answers for questions about what happens after you die. Does God care about you? Is God out there? I entered medical school an atheist. I left as a Christian, to my great surprise.
How did that happen?
I’m a third-year medical student, which is when you’re interacting with patients every day, many of whom have terrible diseases you’re not doing much for. I met an elderly woman near the end of her life. Her faith was critical to her and she would share that with me whenever I came by to check on her. One afternoon, she said, “Doctor, I’ve told you about my faith, but you never say anything. What do you believe?” Four simple words. Probably the most important question I’d ever been asked. I had no idea. I had rejected that question because I didn’t like it. It didn’t fit my scientific mindset. I realized I’d done something narrow-minded. I rejected the possibility of God without looking at the evidence. A scientist isn’t supposed to do that.
So you looked at the evidence?
I did. I found that some of it came from the science itself, the fact that the universe had a beginning. Wait a minute, nature hasn’t been observed to create itself. That seems to call out for a creator who must be outside of nature and outside of time. The universe is so finely tuned that mathematics accurately describes how matter and energy behave, these beautiful equations. Seems like an intelligence must be behind all this. And then gradually coming to the sense that our sense of morality — good and evil — sometimes calls us to do things that are not compatible with our own survival. That cries out for explanation. If the natural world is the only thing that matters, why would you risk your life to save somebody you don’t know? Yet we think that is the noblest form of humanity. That seemed to be a signpost to God as a holy force, that we are supposed to be connected to someone else. So I wandered around amongst world religions, trying to sort out how they made sense of this, and to my astonishment encountered the person of Jesus Christ, who I assumed was a myth. I discovered that historical evidence for his life, death and resurrection were extremely compelling and I couldn’t turn back. I took the leap.
If you harmonize the four anchors, what happens?
I think we get back to a society that lives out our calling. Read the Sermon on the Mount. It was radical at the time, and it’s radical now. It’s about truth: You will know the truth and it will set you free. It’s about trust, who to trust, and it’s about faith and what we are called to be. We are to love not just our neighbors, but our enemies. And today we tend to think of people who disagree with us as enemies that are evil. If we could return to those four anchors, we could heal an otherwise disrupted, distressed and polarized society.
What’s you last word?
It’s up to all of us to turn around this polarization and divisiveness. I don’t see that getting solved by politicians. I think people of faith, who stand on a foundation of love and grace, are in the best position to serve as a counterweight to all the animosity and need to be courageous enough to say, “I’m not going to take part in this mudslinging.”
This story appears in the September 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.