collins NIH
see glantz, harris
oops see NIH
glyphosate E&E
==
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins
see below
seems to have escaped attacks, maybe ,akes sorta happy noises about vaccine, tho did stand up for fauci (religion?); maybe he really was troubled by Glantz?
https://www.statnews.com**/2020/07**/16/francis-collins-defends-fauci/
HINGTON —Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, defended the beleaguered disease researcher Anthony Fauci in an interview this week, calling the prospect of firing or demoting him “unimaginable.”
Fauci, who has led the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 36 years, has recently come under fire from President Trump, an array of White House aides, and other Trump allies. But Collins, who is nominally Fauci’s boss, implied he would not follow orders to dismiss Fauci, should they come. Instead, he touted Fauci’s decades long scientific acumen as a national asset — one that’s especially critical amid a pandemic that has already claimed 138,000 American lives.
“This is a remarkable scientist who has led NIH’s efforts in infectious disease with great distinction for more than 30 years and who continues to be our lead in vaccines and therapeutics for Covid-19,” Collins told STAT. “The idea of losing that leadership at this critical moment for our nation is unthinkable.”
Asked whether his answer meant he would refuse to dismiss Fauci even if ordered by the president or health secretary, Collins only laughed.
“I think you heard my answer,” he said.
Collins’ defense of Fauci comes amid a broader White House effort to discredit the renowned infectious diseases researcher, who, unlike other key figures in the Trump administration’s Covid-19 response, is not a presidential appointee.
Trump, in particular, has openly disagreed with Fauci’s guidance on whether fans should attend professional football games in the fall and whether the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine is an effective Covid-19 treatment (clinical trials show it is not)
in recent weeks, as the U.S. outbreak has spiraled out of control, Fauci has urged Americans to wear masks and to practice social distancing. The White House, however, has refused to amplify his advice, and instead has escalated its attacks on him. In a recent interview, Trump accused Fauci of making “a lot of mistakes” in helping to shape the country’s Covid-19 response.
Brett Giroir, [admiral?] a top health official, suggested in a separate interview that Fauci may fail to account for the “whole national interest,” like the economy, when issuing public health guidance.
And on Wednesday, Peter Navarro, one of Trump’s top economic advisers, attacked Fauci in a USA Today op-ed, headlined: “Anthony Fauci has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on."
the White House later distanced itself from the op-ed, saying Navarro wrote it of his own accord and without clearing it through normal administration protocols.
Since the op-ed, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has dismissed the mounting evidence of a rift between Fauci and Trump administration decision-makers. Trump, too, has mentioned that he and Fauci have a “very good relationship.”
Given Fauci’s status as a civil servant and not a political appointee, it is likely that Trump is not permitted to dismiss him directly. Most non-political appointees in federal service also cannot be dismissed without cause, meaning the Trump administration likely can’t dismiss Fauci and can only reassign him — as was the case with Rick Bright, the ousted vaccines researcher who has filed a whistleblower lawsuit following his removal as director of a federal pandemic preparedness agency.
The CDC has always been an apolitical island. That’s left it defenseless against Trump
In the unlikely event the Trump administration moves to dismiss Fauci, it would likely require the cooperation of his more direct superiors — NIH’s Collins or health secretary Alex Azar.
According to polling, doing so would be politically unwise: 67% of voters in a recent New York Times-Siena poll said they trusted information Fauci shared about the pandemic, compared to just 26% for Trump.
==
it is a tradition for some Republicans in Congress to take aim at research grants that they think are irrelevant and not worthy of taxpayer funding. Now, the chair of the House of Representatives spending panel that funds the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is claiming that some federally funded biomedical research violates government restrictions on lobbying state lawmakers or Congress.
The issue surfaced earlier this month at a hearing of the panel. Representative Andy Harris (R-MD) grilled NIH Director Francis Collins about two grants to tobacco control researcher Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco, in which some of the money was used to trace the Tea Party's origins to groups funded by the tobacco industry. The study reflected "a partisan political agenda," claimedHarris, who calls himself "a Tea Party guy." (Collins responded that he was "quite troubled" by the study.)
As a new member of the panel, Harris doesn't have much clout. But it turns out that its chair, Representative Jack Kingston (R-GA), has the same concerns.
At the same 5 March hearing, Kingston gave Collins this letter expressing concerns about several grants. In addition to Glantz's, Kingston objected to a 1-year, $50,000 award to criminology professor Catherine Gallagher of George Mason University to produce a monograph reviewing research on the health problems of young prison inmates. The letter quotes from Gallagher's abstract, saying the project "is intended to engage the medical, public health, criminal justice, policy, legal and advocacy communities by uniting diverse disciplines around a common issue."
Such studies aren't directly related to NIH's mission, Kingston's letter claims. "As elected officials, we cannot explain to our constituents why their tax dollars are used by NIH to fund advocacy groups [or] address political questions," it says. Kingston asked NIH to review within 30 days all of its grants to make sure they don't violate federal lobbying restrictions. Any activities that "address political questions or fund any advocacy group seeking to develop lobbying material" should be "halted," the letter says.
A week earlier, Kingston asked the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General (IG) to review the Glantz and Gallagher grants. As first reported by The Cancer Letter, Kingston's letter asks the IG to add the grants to an ongoing investigation of whether a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) program aimed at helping communities reduce obesity and smoking may violate a ban on using federal funds to lobby. (Several rules prohibit the use of HHS funds to influence Congress or state legislatures.)
Gallagher says her grant mentioned advocacy groups because only they have access to the prison population. "It's not us taking their plight to lobby," she says. "I think it's crazy in this climate of scare resources to waste people's time on such a trivial matter when we have such a long and dependable peer review process," she adds.
The distinction between research and advocacy came up after the December shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, which drew attention to a Congressional directive barring CDC from advocating for gun control. The White House declared that "research on gun violence is not advocacy" and asked Congress to fund $10 million in research in this area.
==
==
intercept? see hakuyt pvt intel
In one email sent by Todd Rands, a former Monsanto attorney working with FTI, sent a draft of a letter ostensibly written by Rep. Rob Aderholt, R-Ala., a senior lawmaker on the House Appropriations Committee,addressed toDr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes for Health. NIH is the government agency responsible for most federal public health research and is the largest funder to the IARC. The letter, in fact, had been written by FTI consultants, along with Rands’s edits, according to his deposition testimony.
==
unclear if funding cut successful, tho done deal? di it affect future grants?
Legislator Grills NIH Over Tobacco Grant – NIH director, Francis Collins, recently attended a hearing regarding how different Health and Human Services agencies are dealing with reduced budgets. While at the meeting, Representative Andy Harris (R-MD) questioned Collins about a grant to investigate tobacco control funded by the NCI. The PI on the grant, Stanton Glantz, was investigating the influence of “third parties” funded by the tobacco industry. The study, published in *Tobacco Control*, uncovered a link between the tobacco industry and formation of the Tea Party. Harris, a member of the Tea Party, opposes this finding and would prefer that money from tax payers does not cover such research. Collins was also alarmed by the finding and hopes to strike a balance between not funding an “unfortunate outcome” and not micromanaging all NIH-funded research. (Jocelyn Kaiser)
==
genetic engr looks legit
https://www.genengnews.com/a-lists/gen-hall-of-shame/
le monde
Intrusive and bureaucratic guerrilla warfare
Within the space of a few months, at least five individuals presented themselves as a journalist, independent researcher or assistant in law firms to approach IARC scientists and researchers involved in IARC’s work. All were seeking very specific information about the agency’s procedures and funding.
One of them, Miguel Santos-Neves, works for a New York-based economic intelligence company called Ergo.According to a report in the New York Times in July 2016, he was collared during a U.S. judicial investigation for misrepresenting his identity. On behalf of Uber,Mr. Santos-Neves had investigated a plaintiff who had filed a classaction suit against the company and questioned his professional entourage under false pretenses. Ergo did not respond to Le Monde’s enquiries.
Just like Christopher Watts, two sister organizations with nefarious reputations are interested not only in IARC but also in the Ramazzini Institute. The Energy and Environmental Legal Institute (E&E Legal) introduces itself as a non-profit organization, the missions of which include to “hold accountable those who seek excessive and destructive government regulation that’s based on agenda-driven policy making, junk science, and hysteria.”
The Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, for its part, says “it seeks to provide a counter-weight to the litigious environmental movement that fosters an economically destructive regulatory regime in the United States.”
According to Le Monde, they have initiated no fewer than 17 FOIA requests to the NIH and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Engaged in legal, bureaucratic and intrusive guerrilla warfare, they have demanded the correspondence of several American officials “containing the terms ‘IARC’, ‘glyphosate’, ‘Guyton'” (Kathryn Guyton is the IARC scientist responsible for the “Monograph 112”).
They seek the smallest of details on scholarships, grants and other financial and nonfinancial relationships between these American agencies, IARC, some scientists, and the Ramazzini Institute.
“Let nothing go”
The two organizations are headed by David Schnare, a confirmed climate sceptic who is known for harassing climate scientists. In November 2016, Mr. Schnare temporarily left E&E Legal to join Donald Trump’s transition team. As for Steve Milloy, who is also among the leaders of the organization, he is a wellknown figure in the small world of tobacco industry funded propaganda. When asked about their motivations and sources of funding, the president of E&E Legal replied by email: “Hi, we’re not interested in participating.” The attention on these FOIA requests is amplified by op-eds published in some media outlets.
One of them, The Hill, is mandatory reading for every political player in Washington DC.Their authors are a squadron of propagandists that the association US Right to Know (USRTK) has documented as having longstanding ties to agrochemical companies and conservative think tanks, such as the Heartland Institute or the George C. Marshall Institute, both known for their major role in the manufacture of climate skepticism. Their writings expose exactly the same arguments. And sometimes even the same phrases: the “shoddy science” of an IARC ravaged by conflicts of interest and “widely criticized”—yet without ever saying by whom.
The lawyers involved in U.S. lawsuits revealed that Monsanto also used more discreet means.Responding under oath to questions from lawyers representing people who attribute their cancer to Roundup, the firm’s executives revealed a confidential program aimed at countering all criticisms and called “Let Nothing Go.”
The transcripts of these hearings remain confidential. But memos from the law firms involved allow a little more to be known. They show that Monsanto uses third-party companies that “employ individuals who appear to have no connection to the industry but who in turn post positive comments on news articles and Facebook posts, defending Monsanto, its chemicals, and GMOs.”
The machine seems to be racing ahead with the advent of Mr. Trump
In recent months, the coalition against IARC has grown. At the end of January 2017, a few days after the inauguration of Donald Trump at the White House, theAmerican Chemistry Council joined its ranks. The U.S. chemical lobby has opened a new front on social networks in the form of a “Campaign for Accuracy in Public Health Research,” with a dedicated website and a Twitter account.
Its stated purpose is to obtain a “reform” of the IARC monograph program. The powerful lobbying organization has put aside the kid gloves: “A side of bacon or a side of plutonium? It’s all the same according to IARC.” The tweet goes with a photomontage showing two fluorescent green bars dipping into bacon and eggs on a plate.
In October 2015, IARC indeed classified processed meats as “carcinogenic” and red meat as a “probable carcinogen” like glyphosate. Perhaps having privileged access to President Trump’s closest circle provides a feeling of omnipotence to these chemical and agrochemical industries? The chief American lobbyist of the American Chemistry Council, Nancy Beck, taken over as Deputy Assistant Administrator at the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention of the U.S. EPA, the very agency that oversees the re-examination of the glyphosate file.
And was not Andrew Liveris, the boss of Dow Chemical, a member of the American Chemistry Council, entrusted by Donald Trump in person to lead the president’s “Manufacturing Jobs Initiative”?
The machine seems to be racing ahead with the advent of the Trump era. At the end of March, the Republican Texan Lamar Smith, chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, addressed the now former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price. Smith focused his demands on the financial links between the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the Ramazzini Institute in order, he wrote, to “ensure that grant recipients adhere to the highest standards of scientific integrity”.
Ignorance and lies
==
https://theintercept.com/2019/08/23/monsanto-republicans-cancer-research
:{
}:
EMAILS SHOW MONSANTO ORCHESTRATED GOP EFFORT TO INTIMIDATE CANCER RESEARCHERS
Lee Fang
August 23 2019, 3:00 a.m.
IN 2015, the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, classified glyphosate, an active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, as a “probable carcinogen,” setting off a global debate about the world’s most popular weedkiller.
:{
}:
Over the last four years, Republicans in Congress have excoriated and pushed to defund the IARC, casting their defense of the chemical as a quest on behalf of small American farmers. Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., has written that his outrage over the cancer research is on behalf of the “farmers and food manufacturers who rely on traditional farming methods to produce the food that fuels America — and the world.”
:{
}:
But according to a recent trove of documents, the ongoing political assault on the IARC has been scripted in part by Monsanto, the St. Louis-based chemical and seed conglomerate that produces Roundup and Roundup-resistant crops.
:{
}:
Roundup has been cash cow for the company since the 1970s, fueling billions of dollars in annual profits. Its use has skyrocketed in recent decades since the company developed genetically modified corn and other crops that are resistant to it; it is now the world’s leading herbicide.
:{
}:
A growing number of individuals say that Monsanto failed to warn consumers of the dangers of using Roundup and had marketed the chemical spray as harmless to humans, while internally recommending that its own employees use gloves and protective gear. Critics say that the Roundup formula used in the U.S. also contains a surfactant that makes the herbicide far more toxic than the variation of the spray sold in the European market.
:{
}:
Monsanto, which merged with German multinational pharmaceutical company Bayer AG last year, is facing as many as 11,000 cases relating to glyphosate. Last year, Dewayne Johnson, a former groundskeeper now dying of cancer, was the first to win his jury trial in San Francisco state court against Monsanto, alleging that years of using Roundup contributed to his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Johnson was awarded $289 million by a jury, though a judge later reduced the amount to $78 million. Another plaintiff, Edwin Hardeman, also alleged that he spent decades spraying the glyphosate-based weedkiller with little to no protective gear and developed the same blood cancer, won a similar case in federal court this year.
:{
}:
[Plaintiff Dewayne Johnson after hearing the verdict in his case against Monsanto at the Superior Court of California in San Francisco on Aug. 10, 2018. Photo: Josh Edelson, Pool/AP]
The newly disclosed files, released by a plaintiff’s law firm, Baum Hedlund, include company emails, documents, and deposition transcripts showing that Monsanto lawyers and lobbyists guided lawmakers, coordinating efforts to question the IARC’s credibility and slash U.S. support for the international body.
:{
}:
The company has denied claims that its products cause cancer, and Monsanto lawyers have declared that Environmental Protection Agency’s designation of glyphosate as safe should clear the company of any legal liability. In a recent marketing campaign, Bayer touted its friendly cooperation with regulators as a sign that the public should have nothing to fear from its products.
:{
}:
But the documents also suggest that the firm has used its influence with lawmakers to antagonize regulators, applying pressure and investigative threats to shape the science used to research glyphosate and other controversial chemical compounds, as part of a larger campaign to silence critics and discredit the IARC.
:{
}:
IN JUNE 2015, Michael Dykes, then serving as Monsanto’s vice president of government affairs, laid out the company’s strategy for “managing the IARC issue,” following the cancer research center’s determination that March.
:{
}:
The company, he wrote in an email, had dispatched its team of lobbyists to brief “key staff at EPA, USTR, USDA, and the State Department as well as members of Congress” to raise concerns with the IARC’s scientific process, and with how the decision could impact agriculture as well as international trade. Lobbyists also met with an official at the Department of Health and Human Services; they saw the agency’s support as key “to secure a WHO clarification.”
:{
}:
Later in the year, Dykes updated the Monsanto team with plans to push back against the IARC, including the possible placement of advertisements — in the form of letters from third-party groups — in Capitol Hill newspapers, as well as preparation to use a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing as a venue to get the EPA to reaffirm support for glyphosate. “We will make sure Committee members ask EPA the glyphosate safety question,” Dykes wrote.
:{
}:
[Roundup weed killing products on May 14, 2019. Photo Illustration: Scott Olson/Getty Images
The following year, FTI Government Affairs, one of several consulting firms guiding Monsanto’s political response to the IARC decision, assisted GOP lawmakers with an effort to investigate U.S. support for the IARC.
:{
}:
In one email sent by Todd Rands, a former Monsanto attorney working with FTI, sent a draft of a letter ostensibly written by Rep. Rob Aderholt, R-Ala., a senior lawmaker on the House Appropriations Committee,addressed toDr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes for Health. NIH is the government agency responsible for most federal public health research and is the largest funder to the IARC. The letter, in fact, had been written by FTI consultants, along with Rands’s edits, according to his deposition testimony.
:{
}:
The FTI-written letter declared that glyphosate “does not cause cancer,” accused the IARC of peddling “bunk science,” and threatened a reassessment of the NIH budget to ensure that the agency is “committed to only funding organizations that produce information and conclusions based on sound science, robust processes, and credible methodology.”
:{
}:
During his deposition, Rands said that he believed it appropriate for Monsanto to draft a letter on behalf of a lawmaker toNIH, calling such ghostwriting a “common practice in Washington.”
:{
}:
It’s not clear what Aderholt’s office did with the FTI-authored letter. Aderholt’s office did not respond to a request for comment from The Intercept. On June 2, 2016,Aderholt sent a letter to NIHto request a briefing on the IARC’s designation of glyphosate as a probable carcinogen and “the standards that NIH places on research funded by the U.S. taxpayers,” a letter that mirrored many of the demands in the FTI letter, though it used different language.
:{
}:
More GOP letters and demands for investigation over NIH’s funding for IARC followed. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, then-chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., Chaffetz’s successor as Oversight chair, and Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, then-chair of the House Science Committee, all called for inquiries into IARC funding and the designation of glyphosate as a carcinogen.
:{
}:
The Monsanto lobbyists closely conferred with the committees as they honed in on the IARC’s funding. Drew Feeley, an attorney for the GOP staff of the House Oversight Committee, emailed an FTI consultant to explain that his office was working to attach a line to a government budget bill designed “to apply to IARC” in order to slash its funding over the glyphosate issue. “Thanks again for coordinating,” Feeley wrote to the Monsanto consultant. Feeley, notably, is now serving as an attorney with the Council on Environmental Quality, the White House office that oversees environmental policy.
:{
}:
“We expect the House OGR investigation about IARC to expand as they move into the new administration,” wrote Rands, in an update to Monsanto colleagues.
:{
}:
Last year, under Smith, the House Science Committee devoted an entire committee hearing into questioning the IARC, with a focus on its conduct around glyphosate. Smith subsequently sent more letters to cancer researchers in Norway, demanding they “correct the flaws in IARC.” The House Appropriations Committee followed up by cutting $2 million in funding to the IARC, a symbolic move to distance the U.S. from the international body, which relies on a budget of around $40 million from a range of member countries.
:{
}:
THE CONGRESSIONAL OUTREACH was only part of a multifaceted effort to control the backlash sparked by the IARC designation.
:{
}:
In recent years, a great deal of new information has come to light around Monsanto’s work to conceal the potential health risks around glyphosate. Earlier this month, new documents revealed that Monsanto operated a “fusion center” to discredit critics of the company, including former Reuters journalist Carey Gillam, who has written extensively about glyphosate. The operation even monitored and considered legal action again singer Neil Young, a critic of Monsanto.
:{
}:
Le Monde, the French newspaper, published an award-winning investigation on the controversy, referring to the Monsanto-run campaign to discredit the IARC as an effort to “intimidate” the cancer research center.
:{
}:
A separate cache of litigation files, released in May, revealed that Monsanto also contracted with Hakluyt, a corporate intelligence firm, to keep close tabs on political elites in Washington. The company consulted with senior Trump and EPA officials, and confirmed that the administration would support Monsanto on glyphosate issues. “We have Monsanto’s back on pesticide regulation,” a domestic policy adviser in the White House told Hakluyt.
:{
}:
[pixA building on the campus of Monsanto headquarters in St. Louis on May 23, 2016. Photo: Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty Images
The last year has exposed other cloak-and-dagger tactics. The company was criticized for ghostwriting scientific studies on the safety of glyphosate, which were presented as independent research. At the San Francisco civil trial over glyphosate, an FTI consultant working for Monsanto was caught posing as a journalist working for the BBC and another British outlet.
:{
}:
And in 2017, one of the most stunning disclosures revealed that a senior EPA staffer, Jess Rowland, had quietly tipped Monsanto off to the fact that federal agencies had sought to reevaluate the safety of glyphosate, boasting to the company that he could “kill” federal investigations into glyphosate. Shortly before a crucial European Union vote on glyphosate products, the EPA suddenly released a report declaring the safety of the product. The document was later taken down because it had not yet been completed. One Monsanto official relayed to a colleague that Rowland had told him, “If I can kill this I should get a medal,” in regards to the glyphosate review conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a department of Health and Human Services.
:{
}:
After leaving the EPA, Rowland went to work in the private sector, consulting for chemical companies.
:{
}:
There’s also a revolving door between lawmakers supporting Monsanto and professionals working on behalf of the company. Shortly after retiring from Congress this year, following his investigation of theIARC, Lamar Smith took a job at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, a lobbying firm that represents Bayer-Monsanto’s interests in Washington.
==
AMY GOODMAN: Let me just ask Joaquin some — quick question, as we wrap up the show. David Koch was on the board of the National Institutes of Health, right?
JOAQUIN SAPIEN: That’s right. He —
AMY GOODMAN: So, one of the chief lobbyists for formaldehyde is on the board, then leaves. Is there any relation to now the report’s coming out?
JOAQUIN SAPIEN: Well, he offered his resignation in October after an article came out in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer that first raised the issue of his involvement with the board on the National Institutes of Health. How closely this report is linked to his resignation and the conclusions that it made is yet to be seen.
At a congressional hearing on Tuesday,Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said he was "quite troubled" by a taxpayer-funded study that tarred the Tea Party movement as a pawn of Big Tobacco. Collins called the study, led by anti-smoking activist Stanton Glantz, "an unfortunate outcome," saying, "We thought we were funding a different kind of research when those grants were awarded." Science Insider reports that Collins was responding to concerns raised by Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) at a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee:
"They allege that somehow the Tea Party had its origin in the 1980s with tobacco funding, which is pretty incredible," Harris said. "Because I mean, I'm a Tea Party guy. I was there when it was established in 2009. I know the origins. I find it incredible that NIH funding is funding this," Harris said, adding that the study reflects "a partisan political agenda."
When the study was published in the journal Tobacco Control last month, one of Glantz's co-authors declared, "The records indicate that the Tea Party has been shaped by the tobacco industry and is not a spontaneous grassroots movement at all." As I noted at the time, Glantz et al. tried to make the case that the Tea Party was funded and largely created by Philip Morris but ended up arguing that anyone who disagrees with them on issues such as ObamaCare, smoking bans, and cigarette taxes is carrying water for Big Tobacco, even if he does not realize it.
Glantz told Science Insider he was "very troubled" by Collins' comments. After all, when Glantz said in his grant proposal that he planned to study the influence of "third parties" funded by cigarette manufacturers, the NIH should have realized that included political hatchet jobs aimed at discrediting supporters of limited government as shills or dupes of Big Tobacco. It's not his fault that the people he attacked happen to be critics of the current president, which makes it look like the Obama administration is using taxpayer money to pay for opposition research.
[Thanks to Christopher Snowdon for the tip.]
Legislator Grills NIH Over Tobacco Grant
2013-03-06 11:10
A research grant sometimes can lead a scientist in a new direction. But a shift into politically sensitive territory can put the federal funding agency in hot water with Congress.
That's what happened yesterday to Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), at a hearing on how agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services are dealing with tight budgets. One legislator wanted to know why an NIH grantee's research on tobacco control delved into the origins of the Tea Party. Although conservative lawmakers often take issue with certain NIH grants, what was surprising was that Collins said he was troubled by it as well.
The U.S. House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee on health and human services, labor, and education met to ask the directors of five agencies about ways to avoid duplicating research in a tight budget environment. Toward the end of the 2-hour hearing, Representative Andy Harris (R-MD) asked about a specific National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded study tracing Tea Party's origins to groups supported by tobacco companies (video around 1:51 here). "They allege that somehow the Tea Party had its origin in the 1980s with tobacco funding, which is pretty incredible," Harris said. "Because I mean, I'm a Tea Party guy. I was there when it was established in 2009. I know the origins. I find it incredible that NIH funding is funding this," Harris said, adding that the study reflects "a partisan political agenda."
"I, too, am quite troubled about this particular circumstance," Collins replied. He pointed out that the lead author, University of California, San Francisco, researcher Stanton Glantz, has been an NCI grantee for 14 years and is considered a leading researcher on tobacco control. The paper, which listed support from an NCI training grant and an NCI research grant, also included a disclaimer that the NCI played no role in choosing the topic of the study. But, Collins added, "We thought we were funding a different kind of research when those grants were awarded."
Harris fired back: "What is within the NIH's abilities to, shall we say, make sure that this researcher or this institution doesn't play fast and loose with taxpayer money in this kind of research?"
"It's a very appropriate question and I'm struggling with it, to be honest," Collins replied. "The tension here is both to recognize that [the paper] is an unfortunate outcome, but also not to put NIH in a position of basically playing a nanny over top of everything our grantees do."
The study, published last month inTobacco Control, received coverage in both the liberal andconservative press. In it, Glantz and co-authors make the case that two nonprofit groups funded by tobacco companies to fight tobacco taxes and no-smoking laws were among the earliest supporters of what became the Tea Party.
Glantz said he is "very troubled" by Collins's remarks. His grant proposal didn't hide anything, he says. Written several years ago, it discussed his plan to study the influence on policymaking of "third parties" funded by the tobacco industry. "We didn't go looking for the Tea Party. It emerged naturally in the course of the research," he says, just as a cell biologist's research grant might lead in an unexpected direction.
It's not the first time Glantz's research has drawn hostility from Congress. In 1995, House appropriators voted to defund his NCI grant, but their recommendation was stripped from the final spending bill that year. "This is déjà vu all over again," Glantz says.
http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/03/legislator-grills-nih-over-tobacco-grant
Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950) is an American physician-geneticist noted for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP). He currently serves as Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.
Before being appointed Director of NIH, Collins led the HGP and other pioneering genomics research initiatives as Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of NIH's 27 institutes and centers. Before joining NHGRI, he earned a reputation as an innovative gene hunter at the University of Michigan. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicineand the National Academy of Sciences, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science.
Collins also has written a number of books on science, medicine, and spirtuality, including the New York Times bestseller, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.
After leaving the helm of NHGRI and before becoming Director of NIH, he founded and served as president of the BioLogos Foundation, which promotes discourse on the relationship between science and religionand advocates the perspective that belief in Christianity can be reconciled with acceptance of evolution and science. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Contents
- 1 Early years
- 2 Genetics research
- 3 Genomics pioneer
- 4 NIH Director
- 5 Christianity
- 6 Books
- 7 References
- 8 External links
Early years:{:(style="margin-left:-0.25em;margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit source | edit:{beta:(style="vertical-align:top;padding-left:0.5em;display:inline !important;background-image:none !important"):}::{]}:
Collins is the youngest of four sons born to the late Fletcher Collins and Margaret James Collins. Raised on a small farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, Collins was home schooled until the sixth grade.[1] He attended Robert E. Lee High School. Through most of his high school and college years, he aspired to be a chemist, and had little interest in what he then considered the "messy" field of biology. What he refers to as his "formative education" was received at the University of Virginia, where he earned a B.S. in Chemistry in 1970. He went on to attain a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Yale University in 1974. While at Yale, however, a course in biochemistry sparked his interest in the subject. After consulting with his old mentor from the University of Virginia, Carl Trindle, he changed fields and enrolled in medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning anM.D. there in 1977.
From 1978 to 1981, he served a residency and chief residency in internal medicine at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill. He then returned to Yale, where he was named a Fellow in Human Genetics at the medical school from 1981 to 1984.
Genetics research:{:(style="margin-left:-0.25em;margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit source | edit:{beta:(style="vertical-align:top;padding-left:0.5em;display:inline !important;background-image:none !important"):}::{]}:
At Yale, Collins worked under the direction of Sherman Weissman, and in 1984 they published an important paper, Directional cloning of DNA fragments at a large distance from an initial probe: a circularization method.[2] This method was named chromosome jumping, to emphasize the contrast with an older and much more time-consuming method of copying DNA fragments, called chromosome walking.[3]
He joined the University of Michigan in 1984, rising to the rank of Professor of Internal Medicine and Human Genetics. He heightened his reputation as an innovative gene hunter. His gene-hunting approach, which he named "positional cloning",[4][5] developed into a powerful component of modern molecular genetics.
In the 1980s, several scientific teams were working to identify the genes for cystic fibrosis. Toward the end of the decade, progress had been made, butLap-Chee Tsui, heading the team working at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, considered that a shortcut was needed, to speed up the process. For this purpose, he contacted Collins, who agreed to collaborate with Tsui and share his chromosome jumping technique. Subsequently, the gene was discovered in June 1989.[6][7] The discovery was published in the journal Science on Sept. 8, 1989.[8] This was followed by other genetic discoveries made by Collins and a variety of collaborators. These discoveries included isolation of the genes for Huntington's disease,[9] neurofibromatosis,[10][11] multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1,[12] and Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome.[13]
Genomics pioneer:{:(style="margin-left:-0.25em;margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit source | edit:{beta:(style="vertical-align:top;padding-left:0.5em;display:inline !important;background-image:none !important"):}::{]}:
In 1993, Collins accepted an invitation from NIH Director Bernadine Healy to succeed James D. Watson as Director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, which became National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in 1997. As Director, he oversaw the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium,[14] which was the group that successfully carried out the HGP, the public effort that sequenced the roughly 3 billion letters in the human genetic instruction book.
In 1994, he founded NHGRI's Division of Intramural Research (DIR),[15] a collection of investigator-directed laboratories that conduct genome research on the NIH campus and has developed into one of the nation's premier research centers in human genetics. The milestones of NHGRI during the time Collins was director are documented in the article *List of events in NHGRI history*.
A working draft of the human genome was announced in June 2000, and Collins was joined by US President Bill Clinton and biologist Craig Venter in making the announcement.[16] Venter and Collins thus shared the "Biography of the Year" title from A&E Network.[17] An initial analysis was published in February 2001. HGP scientists continued to work toward finishing the reference version of the human genome sequence by 2003, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Watson and Crick's seminal publication of the structure of DNA. In 2005, Collins and Venter were also honored as two of "America's Best Leaders" by U.S. News & World Report and the Harvard Center for Public Leadership [18] Collins's commitment to free, rapid access to genomic information helped to make all data immediately available to the worldwide scientific community.
Another major activity at NHGRI during his tenure as director was the creation of the haplotype map of the human genome. The now-completed "hap map" project produced a catalog of human genetic variations—called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)—which is now being widely used to discover variants correlated with disease risk. Among the labs engaged in that effort is Collins' own lab at NHGRI, which has sought to identify and understand the genetic variations that influence the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
In addition to his basic genetic research and scientific leadership, Collins is known for his close attention to ethical and legal issues in genetics. He has been a strong advocate for protecting the privacy of genetic information and has served as a national leader in securing the passage of the federal Genetic Information and Nondiscrimination Act, which prohibits gene-based discrimination in employment and health insurance.[19] In 2013, spurrred by concerns over the publication of the genome of the widely used HeLa cell line derived from the late Henrietta Lacks, Collins and other NIH leaders worked with the Lacks family to reach an agreement to protect their privacy, while giving researchers controlled access to the genomic data.[20]
Building on his own experiences as a physician volunteer in a rural missionary hospital in Nigeria,[21] Collins is also very interested in opening avenues for genome research to benefit the health of people living in developing nations. For example, in 2010, he helped establish an initiative called Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa)[22] to advance African capacity and expertise in genomic science.
While leading NHGRI, he received numerous awards and honors, including election to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. He was a Kilby International Awards recipient in 1993 and received the William Allan Award from the American Society of Human Genetics in 2005. In 2007, he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[23] In 2008, he was awarded the Inamori Ethics Prize[24] and National Medal of Science.[25]
Collins announced his resignation from NHGRI on May 28, 2008, but has continued to maintain an active lab in the institute's intramural program.[26]
NIH Director:{:(style="margin-left:-0.25em;margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit source | edit:{beta:(style="vertical-align:top;padding-left:0.5em;display:inline !important;background-image:none !important"):}::{]}:
On July 8, 2009 President Barack Obama nominated him to the position of Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).[27] The US Senate unanimously confirmed him for this post, announced by HHS SecretaryKathleen Sebelius on Aug. 7, 2009.[28]
According to Science,[29] Collins "is known as a skilled administrator and excellent communicator" and President Obama's nomination of him to lead the NIH "did not come as a big surprise", and produced many praising analysis from researchers and biomedical groups. It also found critics, mainly due to his outspoken Christian faith. Others think that this fact may prove to be positive to establish bridges with those that see gene-based research as contrary to religious values.[30] His appointment was welcomed by the CEO of theAAAS[30] and by the cardiologist and one-time head of the NIH, Bernadine Healy.[31]
In October 2009, shortly after his nomination as NIH director, Collins stated in an interview in the New York Times,“I have made it clear that I have no religious agenda for the N.I.H., and I think the vast majority of scientists have been reassured by that and have moved on.”[32]
On Oct. 1, 2009, in the second of his four appearances on The Colbert Report, Collins discussed his leadership at the NIH and other topics such as personalized medicine and stem cell research. And, in November 2011, Collins was included on The New Republic's list of Washington's most powerful, least famous people.[33][34]
Collins has undertaken a number of signature projects as NIH Director. Frustrated by the pace at which basic scientific discoveries are translated into drugs and other therapies, Collins led efforts to find ways to reengineer the translational pipeline. Those efforts culminated in the establishment of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) on Dec. 23, 2011.[35] Other important projects included increased support for Alzheimer's disease research, which was announced by HHS Secretary Sebelius and Collins in May 2012;[36] and the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, announced by President Obama and Collins on April 2, 2013 at the White House. In addition, in January 2013, Collins created two new senior scientific positions as part of NIH's response to an advisory group's recommendations on Big Data and the diversity of the scientific workforce.[37] NIH also made headlines in June 2013, when Collins announced plans to reduce substantially the use of chimpanzees in NIH-funded biomedical research.[38]
During his tenure as NIH Director, Collins received numerous awards including the Albany Medical Center Prize in 2010, and the Pro Bono Humanum Award of the Galien Foundation in 2012.[39]
Mention of Collins' love of guitar playing and motorcycle riding can often be found in articles about him.[40] While directing NHGRI, he formed a rock band with other NIH scientists. Sometimes the band, called "The Directors," dueled with a rock band from Johns Hopkins University, led by cancer researcherBert Vogelstein. Lyrics of The Directors' songs included spoofs of rock and gospel classics re-written to address the challenges of contemporary biomedical research.[41] More recently, Dr. Collins has used his musical skills to entertain and educate audiences at TEDMED 2012, StandUpToCancer,[42] and Rock Stars of Science.[43]
Christianity:{:(style="margin-left:-0.25em;margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit source | edit:{beta:(style="vertical-align:top;padding-left:0.5em;display:inline !important;background-image:none !important"):}::{]}:
Collins has described his parents as "only nominally Christian" and by graduate school he considered himself an atheist. However, dealing with dying patients led him to question his religious views, and he investigated various faiths. He familiarized himself with the evidence for and against God in cosmology, and used Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis[44] as a foundation to re-examine his religious view. He eventually came to a conclusion, and became an Evangelical Christian during a hike on a fall afternoon. He has described himself as a "serious Christian".[19]
In his 2006 book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Collins considers scientific discoveries an "opportunity to worship". In his book Collins rejects Young Earth creationism and intelligent design. His own belief is theistic evolution or evolutionary creation which he prefers to termBioLogos. He appeared in December 2006 on The Colbert Report television show and in a March 2007 Fresh Air radio interview to discuss this book.[45][46] While not outspoken on the subject, Collins seems to hold a pro-life view of the abortion issue. In a 1998 interview with Scientific American, he stated that he is "intensely uncomfortable with abortion as a solution to anything" and does not "perceive a precise moment at which life begins other than the moment of conception".[47]
In an interview with National Geographic in February 2007, John Horgan, an agnostic journalist, criticized Collins' description of agnosticism as "a cop-out". In response, Collins clarified his position on agnosticism so as not to include "earnest agnostics who have considered the evidence and still don't find an answer. I was reacting to the agnosticism I see in the scientific community, which has not been arrived at by a careful examination of the evidence. I went through a phase when I was a casual agnostic, and I am perhaps too quick to assume that others have no more depth than I did".[48]
Collins rejects intelligent design, and for this reason was not asked to participate in the 2008 documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Walt Ruloff, a producer for the film, claimed that by rejecting intelligent design, Collins was "toeing the party line", which Collins called "just ludicrous".[49] In 2007, Collins founded the BioLogos Foundation to "contribute to the public voice that represents the harmony of science and faith". He served as the foundation's president until he was confirmed as director of the NIH.[50]
Books
- Principles of Medical Genetics, 2nd Edition, with T.D. Gelehrter and D. Ginsburg (Williams & Wilkins, 1998)
- The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006), which spent many weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list
- The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine (HarperCollins, published in early 2010)
- Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith (HarperOne, March 2, 2010)
- The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions with Karl Giberson IVP Books (February 15, 2011)
References
919
Legislator Grills NIH Over Tobacco Grant | Science | AAAS
https://www.sciencemag.org › news › 2013/03 › legislator-grills-nih-over-t...
1.
Chair of House Spending Panel Says NIH Grants Violate ...
https://www.sciencemag.org › news › 2013/03 › chair-house-spending-panel...
Mar 28, 2013 - Chair of House Spending Panel Says NIH Grants Violate Rules Against Lobbying ... Representative Andy Harris (R-MD) grilled NIH Director Francis Collins about two grants to tobacco control researcher Stanton Glantz of the University ... money was used to trace the Tea Party's origins to groups funded by ...
NIH Director Regrets Taxpayer-Funded Hatchet Job Linking Tea
https://reason.com › 2013/03/07 › nih-director-regrets-taxpayer-funded-hat
1.
:{[PDF]:(style="font-weight:bold;cursor:auto;margin:0px 3px 0px 0px;float:left"):}:
Collins Challenged Over NCI-Funded Research Linking Tea ...
https://tobacco.ucsf.edu › files › Cancer letter March 8 2013-Glantzpdf
1.
Tea, Tobacco, and Science | National Review
https://www.nationalreview.com › tea-tobacco-and-science-brendan-p-foht
1.
GEN Hall of Shame | The Lists | GEN
https://www.genengnews.com › the-lists › gen-hall-of-shame
May 20, 2013 - Meet the Congressional enemies of research funding. ... Andy Harris (R-MD) was NIH's decision to fund two grants totaling about $7 million to Stanton Glantz, Ph.D., director of the Center for Tobacco ... by the grants, which were used in part to link the Tea Party to tobacco industry-funded organizations.
What To Do With Unexpected Politically Sensitive Research ...
https://pascophronesis.wordpress.com › 2013/03/24 › what-to-do-with-une...
1.
Science Policy Around the Web – March 8, 2013 | Science Policy ...
https://sciencepolicyforall.wordpress.com › 2013/03/08 › science-policy-ar...
1.
:{:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:
March | 2013 | Science Policy For All
https://sciencepolicyforall.wordpress.com › 2013/03
1.
NIH Funding Spat - 首页-JBO竞博官网|电竞竞猜、彩票、体育赛事等 ...
www.360wjs.com › the-nutshell › nih-funding-spat-39651
NIH Director Francis CollinsNATIONAL HUMAN GENOME RESEARCH INSTITUTERepublican representative Andy Harris of Maryland raised ... reading about an NIH-funded study connecting the rise of the Tea Party to tobacco funding. ... He explained that the study's author, Stanton A Glantz of the University of California, ...