Former NIH director and current White House science adviser Francis Collins told a group of reporters last week about his love for the Cancer Moonshot and the new biomedical research agency known as ARPA -H. But he also revealed his pain at seeing people turn away from mRNA Covid vaccines being developed at an alarming rate and lamented that he and other health officials had failed to communicate the ever-changing science behind ‘of the Covid recommendations.
“The big thing I know I didn’t do, and I don’t think a lot of advocates did, was say this is an ongoing crisis, this is going to changed every time we made a recommendation, whether it was about social distancing or wearing a mask or vaccinations,” Collins told reporters gathered on September 16 for the 21st Health Coverage Fellowship in held at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. “And we lost their trust because of that.”
Collins, who resigned after 12 years as director of the NIH, was on his way back to his lab to study diabetes, epigenomics and the problem of accelerated aging before President Biden nominated him. to be his scientific adviser – a term he called “not part of my life’s plan” – after Eric Lander abruptly resigned amid a scandal of workplace harassment. He will remain in that position until his successor is confirmed (“It’s up to the U.S. Senate. What can go wrong?”).
Here are some of his words, including his “current frustration” with the country’s failure to eradicate hepatitis C with the cure we have, made clear:
On what went right and wrong with the pandemic response:
In 2020, 2021, when the Covid epidemic is raging and spreading around the world, I don’t think I’ve ever felt the unity of the scientific community to come together, to come up with strategies to fight this epidemic the worst. more than a hundred years. Most of us worked 100 hours a week. I was really like that, trying to make sure that no stone was left unturned to come up with vaccines and treatments and diagnostics that could save the lives that we were losing every day. And it felt that way, like every day I have to make the right decision, or maybe it will be the cost of someone’s life.
So we had an amazing experience with mRNA vaccines where you went from knowing the sequence of the virus to designing an mRNA vaccine 48 hours to 63 days later, when the first patient was vaccinated in a Phase 1 trial. – it’s only fun at its own pace. And I never dreamed that six months later, when anyone who wanted a vaccine could get it, that 50 million people were unvaccinated and still haven’t been [vaccinated]. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that more than 300,000 Americans are in their graves today because of misinformation, doubt, doubt, mistrust that made them say, that vaccine is not safe for me. How did that happen? I never saw that coming. And the consequences of that are all around us now. And it continues. We are still losing 400 people a day, many of them are still not vaccinated.
How have we all failed? We failed to convey scientific information in a persuasive way. We were overwhelmed by the lies and conspiracies on social media. We should have had our own version of filling the system with truth instead of having a system full of lies. Some people I’ve talked to have said, you know, every lie, every conspiracy about Covid, whether it’s the chips in the syringes or whether they’re going to be barren, every one of them was predictable. We should have vaccinated people against that before time, because that is exactly what will happen in such cases.
Maybe we need a Communication Corps for the United States. I’m very worried that trust in science has gone down a lot, and that puts us in a very bad position for whatever comes next: the next pandemic, polio, and indeed climate change.
To faith leaders and Covid vaccines:
This is one of the things that saddens me the most about what has happened in the last few years. There is certainly a source of reliable information that would probably have been of great help in this, but we found out how weak our relationship to scientific faith was in the pulpit and how our country how separate it was.
About Cancer Moonshot Goals:
The way the moon shot is, we’re going to reduce cancer by 50% in 25 years. None of this, “Okay, we’re going to eliminate cancer forever.” Unfortunately, those are not things we can post and we feel confident that you can provide them. I think we can do a combination of prevention and treatment to achieve this 50% reduction, but that is not 100%. This is a very difficult problem, and I think that is what we learn over and over again.
About how cancer and hepatitis C are related:
The current obsession with cancer prevention [is] the most common cause of liver cancer. What would that be? Hepatitis C, a virus that is acquired through the exchange of blood from an infected person to another, so these days, often because of the problem of opioids, is because of dirty needles. Two and a half million people, at least in the United States, are chronically infected with hepatitis C. 40 percent of them don’t even know it because we haven’t done a very good job of doing it. an assessment that may properly exist. necessary. But guess what? There is a cure for this.
It is one of the most exciting developments in medical research in the last 15 years, and most people have not heard of it. It is because of our health care system and the fact that most of the people who have this are not the ones who have insurance policies made of gold to cover what was originally a cost of $ 90,000 for treatment.
Bring it on. I don’t have to convince the president of the importance of that, but you probably know that in the current political situation, anything that will include that as a requirement will be immediately with a lightning rod. Most of the Republican Party does not believe that this is something that can be justified with public money and they are worried that, in fact, it may encourage more people to abuse intravenous drugs. The proof of that, of course, as you know and as I know, is not there, but the way of thinking is still there.
In ARPA-H, basic scientific developments, and clinical applications:
We have mRNA vaccines that are very effective against Covid. It completely revolutionizes the way we begin to think about what we can do with vaccines, including cancer. That would be a great project. How would that happen now? It’s not easy to see. ARPA-H, now a reality, was designed to do just that.
That, of course, requires Senate confirmation as well, in these current times where there is so much political tension about everything. Of course that has to do now with whoever is nominated for this position, whether it’s going to be questions about human fetal cell research or whether it’s going to be about Wuhan and where the virus started how. So it won’t be an easy way to verify.
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