During the early days of the pandemic, former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins became a familiar voice steering the country through an unprecedented public health crisis.
Now, he is going through his own health crisis, an aggressive form of prostate cancer. By talking about it publicly he hopes to draw attention to routine screening.
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As he prepares to leave his post of 12 years, Francis Collins reflects on the agency's biomedical advances, the dangers of polarizing medicine and the huge health gaps that still exist in the U.S.
Francis Collins has served longer than any other director of the National Institutes of Health since 1971. He tells NPR he did not anticipate the culture wars taking over scientific fact.
Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health discuss their fight against "egregious" distortions of reality and when they think life will start to feel more normal.
