On Francis Collins for the NIH

So how do I feel about Francis Collins as director of the NIH?  There are pros and cons.  The pros are that Francis Collins is an accomplished scientist who knows how government works.  He is also a man of great faith.  He wrote The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief where he puts his faith on public display.  This is good for openly religious scientists.  Collins will not discriminate against another scientist simply because of their faith and in a time where science it pitted against religion more and more, (and the religious are ridiculed as "goofballs" by some scientists) this is a good thing.

Also, Collins' faith tells me that he values the contribution of religion to bioethical issues.  Science needs moral guidance from other disciplines like religion and the law because it has no internal moral compass.  Science cannot stand alone without any moral oversight.  A big plus is that Collins believes that a human embryo has moral worth.  He believes in the sanctity of human life.  This is important because many scientists just see a human embryo as no more than just a clump of cells and therefore available to be manipulated and destroyed.

That being said, Collins major minus is that he seems to believe that the moral worth left-over IVF embryos maybe outweighed by the potential benefit of using those left-over embryos for research.  He states in an interview:

There are hundreds of thousands of those embryos currently frozen away in in vitro fertilization clinics. And it is absolutely unrealistic to imagine that anything will happen to those other than they’re eventually getting discarded. So as much as I think human embryos deserve moral status, it is hard to see why it’s more ethical to throw them away than to take some that are destined for discarding and do something that might help somebody.

The Catholic Church rejects this argument.  It is not morally permissible to intentionally end an innocent human no matter how well intentioned the goal.  At least, Collins sees there are moral issues with destroying embryos for research.  Obama could have appointed someone who had no moral reservations.

I believe Collins draws the line at creating embryos with egg and sperm just for research purposes.  This is good.  A definite pro.  But there is a disconnect in Collins views on cloning embryos for research.  He believes there is fundamental moral difference between embryos created with egg and sperm and embryos created with somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) better known as cloning.  According this critique, Collins wrote appendix in his book called "Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer is Fundamentally Different," he wrote:

“I would argue that the immediate product of a skin cell and an enucleated egg cell fall short of the moral status of the union of sperm and egg”

According to this, Collins believes that embryos created by cloning do not share the moral worth of embryos created with egg and sperm.  This suggests that he thinks cloning embryos for research is morally permissible. 

But there is no fundamental difference between a human embryo created with egg and sperm and a human embryo created with SCNT.  Both are full members of the human species.  In fact, a cloned embryo is an "exact" copy of another human organism which proves it is a human organism itself.  Dolly the sheep was created by SCNT.  She was no less a sheep than the other sheep on her farm.  In fact, she was a genetic twin of the animal from which her DNA was taken.  This aspect of Collins philosophy is disturbing.  Maybe he will have an epiphany and see the error in his thinking.

Overall, I think Collins is a good choice for NIH director.  While he has some definite cons, the fact that he acknowledges the sanctity of human life is important.  That is a huge pro and should be celebrated. 

Hat Tip: Her.meneutics