Genome mapper Francis Collins, picked to head NIH, touted as evangelical. Is that fair to either side?
Collins, well known as the genome mapper who sat with President Clinton and others on the White House lawn in 2000, is the new head of National Institutes of Health.
As others have noted, he may be as well known for his recent book, The Language of God, part personal testimony and part explanation of how there need be no conflict between faith and science.
Some are skeptical. David Klinghoffer writes,
Do you ever notice how religious believers are always cited by the media as “devout” precisely when they are equivocating on basic Judeo-Christian moral and theological tenets? Dr. Francis Collins has some startling ideas on abortion. Startling, that is, from an Evangelical Christian who is Obama’s choice to head up the National Institutes of Health. He’s a favorite church speaker with Evangelical audiences, especially on how Darwinism poses no threat to their faith.
Klinghoffer offers some examples of his concerns:
– From an interview here at Beliefnet:
Q: [S]ometimes when parents learn that their child has Down Syndrome, they terminate the pregnancy. What is your opinion of that sort of scenario?
A: I’m troubled that the applications of genetics that are currently possible are oftentimes in the prenatal arena. That is not the reason I went into this field.
The reason I went into this field was to figure out how to treat illnesses, rather than try to stop such individuals from even being born. But, of course, in our current society, people are in a circumstance of being able to take advantage of those technologies. And we have decided as a society that that choice needs to be defended.