In this room of simple chairs and bare walls, Francis Collins--trailblazing scientist, cartographer of the human genome--meets Francis Collins, explorer who knows he still lacks much knowledge. You can almost see the lanky teen of 35 years ago who adored chemistry and physics for their logic and order but hated biology for its unpredictability. Odd, then, that the accomplishment for which Collins is globally known, the Human Genome Project, has so much to do with the science of life. A scant seven months ago, Collins and J. Craig Venter, the rival scientist who led a private-sector effort at the same time Collins was leading a public consortium effort, announced they had all but finished mapping and sequencing the human genome,1 opening up one world of medical and genetic possibilities and another world of ethical dilemmas. Francis Collins, who gained recognition from his work on the Human Genome Project, believes that ...
Ardent Scientist, Savvy Advocate
On most days, Francis S. Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, coordinates with genome centers around the world and evaluates ethical, legal, and social implications of the project that made him famous. But Collins reserves this day in late July for the passion that brought him to the institute in the first place: research to identify which of the human body's 35,000 genes causes Type 2 diabetes. Assembled around a table in the vaccine center of the National Institut
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