The former director of the National Institutes of Health said he’s “deeply troubled” by changes that are happening at the agency he once led.
Dr. Francis Collins, who is renowned for his work on the Human Genome Project, said this is “a remarkably difficult time” at the NIH.
Collins has lived in Montgomery County, Maryland, for 30 years and worked at the NIH for decades before becoming director from August 2009 to December 2021. He retired from the NIH three weeks ago, leaving as the agency was being upended by budget cuts and layoffs.
Collins spoke to reporters during a briefing held by Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich on Wednesday, saying he had witnessed changes at NIH under different presidential administrations.
“A change … is to be expected, that there are going to be hiring freezes and so on, but this is different,” Collins said.
There have been “quite a number of really quite dramatic actions that are degrading the ability of NIH” to perform the mission that taxpayers expect, Collins said.
The agency’s track record is “pretty impressive,” he said, noting that a number of medical accomplishments are due to the work done at the NIH, such as heart disease and cancer-related deaths dropping significantly, as well as the works to cure sickle cell disease.
Collins points to the NIH having played a significant role in the development of COVID-19 vaccines that saved an estimated “3.1 million lives in the U.S. alone.”
He said there are “rules that are being applied by the (Department of Government Efficiency) team that are very difficult to understand in terms of how they are going to actually improve the mission of the enterprise.”
The “Department of Government Efficiency” is a Trump administration commission tasked with slashing federal spending.
Collins pointed to the firing of 1,165 workers on Valentine’s Day and said “many of those were people who were bringing with them new and exciting ideas. That’s why they were hired.”
Some of the workers who were let go have since returned to work. Collins expressed hope that the incoming director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, could “put some kind of brakes” to further action that could hamper the work of the health agency.
WTOP has reached out to the NIH for comment.