Late last week, Christian geneticist Francis Collins resigned abruptly as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). On Wednesday this week, the U.S. Senate held a confirmation hearing for a new NIH director, Stanford University medical professor Jay Bhattacharya, a fellow Christian who Collins privately disparaged as one of “three fringe epidemiologists” during the COVID crisis.
In many ways, the transition marks the end of an era.
For nearly two decades, Collins has been the most prominent — and powerful — Evangelical Christian scientist in America. After leading the Human Genome Project, Collins served as director of the NIH for 12 years (2009-2021). He then became acting White House Science Advisor in the Biden Administration.
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During these years, Collins was celebrated by many Evangelicals because of his acceptance by the secular establishment. However, those Christians might have been wise to reflect on why the establishment has been so approving of Collins.
In 2019, the journal Science noted that when Collins originally was appointed as NIH director by President Barack Obama, some worried “that his outspoken Christian faith would influence his leadership.” But Science went on to assure readers that the critics need not have worried: “His religion never became an issue — he followed Obama’s order to loosen rules for stem cell research, which some Christians oppose, and has defended fetal tissue research despite criticism from antiabortion groups.”
A journalist at Slate put it even more bluntly: “If Collins’ faith mollifies even a few political conservatives who would otherwise continue to waste time and money fighting research efforts that violate their specific religious tenets, then the benefits of his faith should outweigh whatever qualms scientists might have.”
For more than a decade, Collins served the secularists’ agenda at NIH by providing cover for them to do what they wanted to do anyway.
As NIH director, Collins championed the unrestricted funding of embryonic stem-cell research, which involves the destruction of human embryos for medical research. And in 2021, Collins implemented the repeal of Trump-administration restrictions on the use of aborted fetal tissue in NIH-funded research.
These actions were only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. We now know that the NIH under Collins funded gruesome experiments utilizing body parts collected from aborted human babies to create “humanized mouse and rodent models with full-thickness human skin.” For the experiments, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh cut into tiny pieces “human fetal spleen, thymus, and liver organs” and “then transplanted the tissues and … stem cells into irradiated … mice.” Researchers also sliced off skin from the scalp of the aborted babies and then grafted the fetal skin onto the mice.
Thanks to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, we also know about the NIH’s role in facilitating the use of baby parts in research on a nationwide level.
According to Judicial Watch, documents show that the NIH under Collins provided nearly $3 million in tax dollars to support a fetal organ harvesting operation by the University of Pittsburgh in its “quest to become a ‘Tissue Hub’ for human fetal tissue ranging from 6 to 42 [!] weeks gestation.”
David Daleiden, president of The Center for Medical Progress, alleged that NIH funding was used to underwrite “labor induction abortions, where the baby is pushed out of the mother whole” and then killed to obtain the desired tissues. In other words, the NIH was facilitating a process where “babies, some of the age of viability, [are] to be delivered alive, and then killing them by cutting their kidneys out.”
Abortion wasn’t the only area where Collins conformed to the reigning culture.
As NIH director, he threw enthusiastic support behind the LGBT political and social movement, pledging in 2021 to be “an ally and advocate” of that movement, although he is merely “a white cisgender and heterosexual man.” Collins didn’t just offer verbal support. Under his leadership, the NIH funded researchers and hospitals that promoted puberty blockers and sex-destructive surgeries on minors.
When it came to COVID, Collins championed the Biden administration’s expansive vaccine mandates. Appearing on MSNBC in September 2021, Collins praised Biden’s draconian mandates as “a very forceful, muscular approach.” In the same interview, Collins implied that unvaccinated people were selfish, declaring that “this is really an occasion to think about loving your neighbor, not just yourself.” Collins then portrayed unvaccinated people and politicians who didn’t favor vaccine mandates as killers on the wrong side of history.
Collins also has crusaded against Christians who are skeptical of Darwinian evolution or think biology shows evidence of intelligent design. Biochemist Michael Behe has been a special target of Collins’ criticism.
The sad truth is that it’s precisely because of Collins’ embrace of the secularist agenda that he rose to the top. He is an example of what I have called Stockholm Syndrome Christianity. He sincerely identifies as a Christian in his personal life, but the policy views of his public life don’t really reflect that personal commitment. Indeed, his policy views are closer to the views of secular materialists than to those of his fellow believers.
Collins is indicative of a much broader problem facing Christians who desire to influence culture.
Some Christians naïvely think that if only we had more Christians in positions of power our society would be different. In truth, we already have lots of self-identified Christians in government, law, entertainment, and, yes, even science.
The problem is that far too many of them are Stockholm Syndrome Christians like Collins. So, their faith is neutered.
Most Christians in America grow up in cultural captivity. They are immersed in a culture hostile to historic Christianity at home, school, college, and the workplace. This is especially true of those who go on to be professors, journalists, filmmakers, politicians, and, indeed, scientists. After they have been immersed for years in an elite culture that rejects historic Christianity, they can easily start identifying more with that elite culture than with their own faith.
Until we understand the problem, we won’t be able to solve it.
John G. West, Ph.D., is Vice President of Discovery Institute and author of Stockholm Syndrome Christianity: Why Christian Leaders Are Failing — and What We Can Do About It.
