Clinton and Collins: The Language of God

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 286 - Clinton and Collins: The Language of God

Before we jump into this episode, I want to announce what is perhaps the most ambitious undertaking that Celebrate Poe has ever published - the 2024 Halloween episode - combining appropriate sound effects with Poe’s story.  This Halloween episode combines The Pit and the Pendulum with some observations regarding contemporary politics, and I decided to go ahead and call it Politics and the the Pendulum.  This episode will also mark the return of the Ghost of Edgar Allan Poe and a renewed emphasis regarding the life, times, and works of the writer.  I plan to release Politics and the Pendulum on October 31 - the morning of Halloween

Now, as we get closer and closer to Election Day in the United States, I want to change the subject of the current series of Celebrate Poe - this podcast will be the final episode - at least for now - where I delve into great speeches by great Americans.   In fact, parts of today’s podcast have a slight connection to Edgar Poe - but I will get into that later.  As many of you may know, I am from the relatively small town of Staunton, Virginia - also the hometown of Dr. Francis Collins - the subject of today’s podcast.  Dr. Collins just might be one of the greatest Americans who has ever lived, and by the time this episode is over, you just might agree with me.

Transcript

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 286 - Clinton and Collins: The Language of God

Before we jump into this episode, I want to announce what is perhaps the most ambitious undertaking that Celebrate Poe has ever published - the 2024 Halloween episode - combining appropriate sound effects with Poe’s story.  This Halloween episode combines The Pit and the Pendulum with some observations regarding contemporary politics, and I decided to go ahead and call it Politics and the the Pendulum.  This episode will also mark the return of the Ghost of Edgar Allan Poe and a renewed emphasis regarding the life, times, and works of the writer.  I plan to release Politics and the Pendulum on October 31 - the morning of Halloween

Now, as we get closer and closer to Election Day in the United States, I want to change the subject of the current series of Celebrate Poe - this podcast will be the final episode - at least for now - where I delve into great speeches by great Americans.   In fact, parts of today’s podcast have a slight connection to Edgar Poe - but I will get into that later.  As many of you may know, I am from the relatively small town of Staunton, Virginia - also the hometown of Dr. Francis Collins - the subject of today’s podcast.  Dr. Collins just might be one of the greatest Americans who has ever lived, and by the time this episode is over, you just might agree with me.  Oh by the way, when Edgar Poe was just a boy, his the Allan family would stop and spend the night in Staunton during their annual retreat to White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia - tho the area was not known West Virginia at the time - but I digress.

Now in the excellent  “The Language of God - A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” - one of the best books I have ever read - Dr. Francis Collins writes about his life and works.  Out of necessity, I am just going to touch on some of the areas of his life, and highly recommend that you experience his writings.  His second book is The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine. I listen to the audiobook versions of both books from the local library, and I think I liked The Language of God better because it is read by the author, and you get Dr Collins’s inflections and feel his enthusiasm regarding religion and science. I think it is far more meaningful to hear the author relate his or her own story.

Francis Collins was the youngest of four sons of Fletcher Collins and Margaret Collins.  He was raised on a dirt farm in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. His parents had met at graduate school at Yale in 1931, and were skilled community organizers.  They worked with Eleanor Roosevelt in attempting to reinvigorate a depressed mining community in West Virginia called Arthurville.  It is said that when Eleanor Roosevelt would want to go to Arthurville, she got in her car and drove from there from Washington D.C. Can you imagine a first lady today just jumping in a car and driving alone on a country road.  And each year, Eleanor Roosevelt would convince her husband, the then President Franklin Roosevelt, to speak at the small high school in Arthurville.   Imagine having the President of the United States as your high school graduation speaker!

 After World War II, Fletcher and Margaret Collins could be described as “hippies ahead of the their time.” - this was during the 1940s.   They moved to the Shenandoah Valley, bought a ninety five acre farm, and tried to raise crops without farm equipment.  Mr. Collins Sr. soon realized that life on a farm was not going to feed his family, so he got a job teaching drama at a local college, Mary Baldwin University.  Fletcher and Margaret Collins also started a great outdoor theatre called Oak Groove, and attending plays there was one of the highlights of my youth.

Now back to Francis Collins - he originally wanted to be a chemist - he considered biology to be a messy science.  Then he went on to graduate school at the University of Virginia and then Yale.  While at Yale, he took a course in biochemistry - a course that sparked his interest in biology and changed his life. He changed fields, and enrolled in medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  After his medical residency, he returned to Yale where he studied human genetics.

Over the years he conducted genetics research, and eventually became the director of the Human Genome Project.  Then President Clinton and Dr, Collins announced that Dr. Collins and a team of researcher had discovered a working draft of the human genome. 

Rather than trying to explain the significance of this discovery, I am going to play a recording of President Clinton and Dr. Collins announcing that  discovery in the East Room of the White House   I think this is probably to best way to begin to wrap your head around the significance of this discovery

First, the address by President Clinton, followed by some words by Dr. Collins.   Both are about 5 or 6 minutes long - and I feel their speeches are definitely worth your attention - these are findings that could lead to a eventual cure for cancer, Alzheimers. and a host of diseases.  

Nearly two centuries ago, in this room, on this floor, Thomas Jefferson and a trusted aide spread out a magnificent map -- a map Jefferson had long prayed he would get to see in his lifetime. The aide was Meriwether Lewis and the map was the product of his courageous expedition across the American frontier, all the way to the Pacific. It was a map that defined the contours and forever expanded the frontiers of our continent and our imagination.

Today, the world is joining us here in the East Room to behold a map of even greater significance. We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind. The moment we are here to witness was brought about through brilliant and painstaking work of scientists all over the world, including many men and women here today. It was not even 50 years ago that a young Englishman named Crick and a brash even younger American named Watson, first discovered the elegant structure of our genetic code. "Dr. Watson, the way you announced your discovery in the journal Nature, was one of the great understatements of all time. This structure has novel features, which are of considerable biological interest." (Laughter) Thank you, sir. (Applause)

How far we have come since that day. In the intervening years, we have pooled the combined wisdom of biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, mathematics and computer science; tapped the great strengths and insights of the public and private sectors. More than 1,000 researchers across six nations have revealed nearly all 3 billion letters of our miraculous genetic code. I congratulate all of you on this stunning and humbling achievement.

Today's announcement represents more than just an epic-making triumph of science and reason. After all, when Galileo discovered he could use the tools of mathematics and mechanics to understand the motion of celestial bodies, he felt, in the words of one eminent researcher, "that he had learned the language in which God created the universe."

Today, we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift. With this profound new knowledge, humankind is on the verge of gaining immense, new power to heal. Genome science will have a real impact on all our lives -- and even more, on the lives of our children. It will revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases.

In coming years, doctors increasingly will be able to cure diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and cancer by attacking their genetic roots. Just to offer one example, patients with some forms of leukemia and breast cancer already are being treated in clinical trials with sophisticated new drugs that precisely target the faulty genes and cancer cells, with little or no risk to healthy cells. In fact, it is now conceivable that our children's children will know the term cancer only as a constellation of stars.

But today's historic achievement is only a starting point. There is much hard work yet to be done. That is why I'm so pleased to announce that from this moment forward, the robust and healthy competition that has led us to this day and that always is essential to the progress of science, will be coupled with enhanced public-private cooperation.

Public and private research teams are committed to publishing their genomic data simultaneously later this year, for the benefit of researchers in every corner of the globe. And after publication, both sets of teams will join together for an historic sequence analysis conference. Together, they will examine what scientific insights have been gleaned from both efforts, and how we can most judiciously proceed toward the next majestic horizons.

What are those next horizons? Well, first, we will complete a virtually error-free final draft of the human genome before the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the double helix, less than three years from now. Second, through sustained and vigorous support for public and private research, we must sort through this trove of genomic data to identify every human gene. We must discover the function of these genes and their protein products, and then we must rapidly convert that knowledge into treatments that can lengthen and enrich lives.

I want to emphasize that biotechnology companies are absolutely essential in this endeavor. For it is they who will bring to the market the life-enhancing applications of the information from the human genome. And for that reason, this administration is committed to helping them to make the kind of long-term investments that will change the face of medicine forever.

The third horizon that lies before us is one that science cannot approach alone. It is the horizon that represents the ethical, moral and spiritual dimension of the power we now possess. We must not shrink from exploring that far frontier of science. But as we consider how to use new discovery, we must also not retreat from our oldest and most cherished human values. We must ensure that new genome science and its benefits will be directed toward making life better for all citizens of the world, never just a privileged few.

As we unlock the secrets of the human genome, we must work simultaneously to ensure that new discoveries never pry open the doors of privacy. And we must guarantee that genetic information cannot be used to stigmatize or discriminate against any individual or group. Increasing knowledge of the human genome must never change the basic belief on which our ethics, our government, our society are founded. All of us are created equal, entitled to equal treatment under the law. After all, I believe one of the great truths to emerge from this triumphant expedition inside the human genome is that in genetic terms, all human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9 percent the same. What that means is that modern science has confirmed what we first learned from ancient fates. The most important fact of life on this Earth is our common humanity. My greatest wish on this day for the ages is that this incandescent truth will always guide our actions as we continue to march forth in this, the greatest age of discovery ever known.

After a remote address given by Tony Blair, then Prime Minister of England, Dr. Collins spoke:

DR. COLLINS:    First of all, I would like to thank, most sincerely, President Clinton for his remarkable leadership in getting us to this point.

His strong and consistent voice for the importance of innovative science and its responsible uses to better the human condition has been an inspiration to all of us. He knows that genomics is one of the truly interdisciplinary fields of science requiring vigorous and creative involvement from physics, chemistry, engineering, computer science and biology.

I have also had the privilege to witness time and again the President's personal conviction that we must apply just as much energy and attention to solving the ethical, legal and social issues as we do to the bench research, and you saw that demonstrated again a few moments ago. His effective leadership in this area has moved us substantially closer to the time when no American need fear that information about their genome will be used against them.

Science is a voyage of exploration into the unknown. We are here today to celebrate a milestone along a truly unprecedented voyage, this one into ourselves. Alexander Pope wrote, "Know then thyself. Presume not God to scan. The proper study of mankind is man." What more powerful form of study of mankind could there be than to read our own instruction book?

I've been privileged over the last seven years to lead an international team of more than a thousand of some of the best and brightest scientists of our current generation, some of them here in this room, who have been truly dedicated to this goal. Today, we celebrate the revelation of the first draft of the human book of life.

Most of the sequencing of the human genome by this international consortium has been done in just the last 15 months. During that time, this consortium has developed the capacity to sequence 1,000 letters of the DNA code per second, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. We have developed a map of overlapping fragments that includes 97 percent of the human genome, and we have sequenced 85 percent of this.

The sequence data is of higher quality than expected with half of it in finished or near-finished form. And all of this information has been placed in public databases every 24 hours, where any scientist with an Internet connection can use it to help unravel the mysteries of human biology. Already, more than a dozen genes, responsible for diseases from deafness to kidney disease to cancer, have been identified using this resource just in the last year.

So there is much to celebrate. But I have to tell you that this morning is also a bitter-sweet experience for me, personally. Less than 24 hours ago, I attended the funeral of my beloved sister-in-law, a wonderful marionette artist who brought magic and joy to thousands of children with her art. She died much too soon of breast cancer. The hope and promise of understanding all of the genes in the genome and applying this knowledge to the development of powerful new tools came just too late for her.

I think I speak for all of us in this room, and for the millions of others who have come to believe in the remarkable promise of biomedical research, that we must redouble our efforts to speed the application of these profound and fundamental observations about the human genome to the cure of disease. That most desirable of all outcomes will only come about with a continued powerful and dedicated partnership between basic science investigators and academia, and their colleagues in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

As the President has said, we still have much to do. Many tasks lie ahead if we are to learn how to speak the language of the genome fluently. Today is most certainly not the end of genomics, but perhaps it's the end of the beginning. Together we must develop the advances in medicine that are the real reason for doing this work. And with just as much vigor, we must provide the protections against potential misuses of genetic information. If there is anyone within the sound of my voice who has not seen that as a priority, I hope today's announcement is the necessary wake-up call.

It's a happy day for the world. It is humbling for me and awe-inspiring to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God. What a profound responsibility it is to do this work. Historians will consider this a turning point. Researchers in a few years will have trouble imagining how we studied human biology without the genome sequence in front of us.

I particularly welcome the opportunity to celebrate this moment jointly with our scientific colleagues at Celera Genomics, and I wish to express my personal gratitude to Dr. Craig Venter for his openness in the cooperative planning process that led to this joint announcement. I congratulate him and his team on the work done at Celera, which uses an elegant and innovative strategy that is highly complementary to the approach taken by the public project. Much will be learned from a comparison of the two.

I'm happy that today, the only race we are talking about is the human race. (Applause)   

Dr. Collins used President Clinton’s references to God in his language for the title of his book, The Language of God - and I used The Language of God in the title of this episode.  Dr. Collins is a highly religious man constantly concerned about ethics and doing the right thing.  Rather than go into his evolution of faith and how he convincingly reconciles believe in a supreme being with the world of science, I recommend that you read The Language of God for Dr. Collin’s story.  It is an extremely nuanced and  powerful book.

Dr. Collins and his discoveries at the National Institutes of Health certainly seemed to point to promising discoveries and advances in medicine, but unfortunately the story did not end smoothly.  Then President Donald Trump - who tended to believe that he knew better than anyone else regarding a situation - attempted to force Collins to endorse unproven and even dangerous COVID-19 remedies. This pressure put Collins in a difficult position as a scientist and public health official. Despite potential tensions, President Trump chose to retain Collins as the NIH director.   28This decision allowed for continuity in leadership at the NIH during a critical time. The handling of the COVID-19 crisis under the Trump administration was controversial - to say the least - with several issues arising:

For example, there were instances where the administration appeared to disregard expert advice. Collins, along with other public health officials, sometimes found themselves completely at odds with the administration's approach to the pandemic.

Collins had to contend with pressure to endorse treatments that lacked scientific evidence, which created challenges in maintaining scientific integrity while navigating political demands.

The conflicting messages between scientific experts and some administration officials led to confusion and mistrust among the public, potentially hampering effective pandemic response.

And while Dr. Collins attempted to maintain scientific rigor and provide  evidence-based guidance, the political environment during the Trump administration created obstacles in effectively managing the COVID-19 crisis. The situation highlights the importance of aligning political leadership with scientific expertise during public health emergencies.

There is no question that Dr. Francis Collins faced several specific pressures from the Trump administration regarding COVID-19: Collins revealed that he faced pressure from President Trump to endorse scientifically-disproven remedies for COVID-19. He stated, "I got into a difficult place and got a bit of a talking-to by the president, but I stuck my ground”. Collins indicated he was willing to step down from his position if the White House tried to force him to compromise scientific principles. When asked if he would have resigned if pressured to do something he disagreed with, Collins replied, "Yeah, I was not going to compromise scientific principles just to hold onto the job” Collins also resisted pressure from right-wing groups calling for him to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of his team and a leading expert on infectious diseases.

And while Collins and other public health officials aimed to communicate the seriousness of the pandemic, Trump often downplayed the threat of COVID-19 and was publicly optimistic, creating a conflict in messaging.

When he was informed that COVID would turn into a very serious problem, Trump said that COVID will go away in the spring after a few weeks.  Author Bob Woodward has written that if Trump had not ignored or dismissed COVID, he could have seen it as a serious problem and worked to develop a cure immediately - therefore most likely insuring his re-election.  Instead the virus caused one of the most deadly disasters in our nation’s history.

Unfortunately, Trump initially ignored COVID, and there were over 100 million cases of the Coronavirus in the United States, and over 1 million deaths.

Sources include The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief and The Language of Life DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine by Dr. Francis Frances Collins.

Thank you for listening to Celebrate Poe.