A Conversation with Dr. Francis Collins
PROF CHANG: Hello I'm Curtis Chang. I'm a theologian and former pastor. We here at Redeeming Babel have produced a series of videos to help Christians think about the vaccine. One of the key themes in our videos is the importance of trust. But who do we trust? Well, one such person that I have complete confidence in is Dr. Francis Collins. Dr. Collins is the head of the National Institutes of Health, the NIH, and is one of the world's leading scientists. He is directly overseeing the development of the COVID vaccines from the very beginning. And I also appreciate that Dr. Collins is a fellow follower of Jesus and he's widely respected for his integrity and commitment to serving the public. I now have the exciting opportunity to ask him directly questions that I and many people have about the vaccine. Dr. Collins, welcome and thanks for joining us.
DR. COLLINS: Thanks, Curtis. I'm glad to be with you, and I'm glad to talk about trust and let me say right up front, I trust in Jesus as the source of all truth and I'm sure that we would agree that's our best foundation.
PROF CHANG: Absolutely, amen. So let's get into it. The speed that these vaccines were developed, it makes me nervous. Don't vaccines usually take many years to develop? Was this rushed and corners cut?
DR. COLLINS: It is the case that vaccines traditionally have taken many years, but this was a crisis with millions of people's lives at risk. So what we did scientifically was unprecedented. We basically identified all of the downtime that happens when a vaccine is being developed and tried to eliminate that and organize all of those steps so that they happen seamlessly one after the other. Always ready, of course to abandon a vaccine that failed to meet the highest standards of safety and efficacy. And the good news was we didn't have to abandon them because the results were even better than I could have really dared to hope for. And so in just 11 months with probably the most rigorous analysis that's ever been done of a new vaccine, we were able to see that they actually were safe and 95% effective in preventing disease but no corners were cut. This was done with the most extreme sort of perspective about scientific rigor that could possibly have been imagined in such a short period of time. So people can trust that this was done right.
PROF CHANG: What about long-term side effects? These vaccines are so new. How do we know there isn't something horrible lurking down the road?
DR. COLLINS: It is true that we've only known about this virus for a little over a year. And so there's a lot that we don't know about the disease itself. And of course we can't say whether there might be some very long-term side effects of the vaccines. But the facts are that if you look at every other vaccine that's ever been developed, if you're going to see serious side effects those generally become clear in the first couple of months after people get injected. That's why in the trials, FDA was not going to accept any of these vaccines until two months had passed for the people who were involved in those large scale trials to make sure that they weren't seeing unexpected side effects and they didn't. So that is about the most reassurance one can get in this situation. When you consider the risks of the disease, that still seems like the risk of any uncertain long-term side effect is very small by comparison.
PROF CHANG: I understand some of the COVID vaccines use new technology, particularly mRNA. And some fear that this mRNA approach will actually alter their DNA, can you speak to that?
DR. COLLINS: It's important to understand that mRNA is a message. That's what the M stands for. It's the way in which a particular instruction in DNA ultimately turns into a protein, in this case the spike protein of the virus that you want your immune system to recognize. But the information flow goes from DNA to RNA, not the other way around. And the messenger RNA that's in these vaccines never actually gets inside the nucleus of the cell, which is where DNA is. So this idea that this is going to alter your own DNA doesn't fit with what we know about basic biology.
PROF CHANG: Some people are naturally risk averse and they just don't want to risk taking a new vaccine. But can you talk about what the risk is for someone who doesn't take the vaccine?
DR. COLLINS: All of us when we're faced with a decision have to think about benefits and risks. And we have to think about risks in both categories. If we do this, or if we don't. We know that the risk of taking the vaccine is extremely low. That's what the evidence shows from these large scale trials. The risk of not taking the vaccine we know can be substantial. More than 500,000 people have died in the United States from COVID-19 and it's still out there. So the risk of that measured against a potential side effect that might happen in the distant future seems to anybody who's sort of looking at those and trying to size them up side by side, to make a pretty good case for rolling up your sleeve. And of course, by doing so, you're also protecting other people around you. You're not going to be the one who gets infected and spreads this to other vulnerable people. This is not just about yourself, it's about your family, your friends, your neighbors. This is a moment to love your neighbor.
PROF CHANG: As a pro-life person, should I be concerned about the connection between abortion and these vaccines?
DR. COLLINS: There's been concern about whether these vaccines utilize materials derived from abortions. In a small way yes, there is a cell line derived 50 years ago that was derived from an elective termination in Scandinavia when that was legal. And that cell line, which has been propagated in laboratories for decades is actually used in one of the vaccines, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine as part of the process of making the vaccine. But there's no cells in the vaccine. And there's certainly no recently derived fetal cells in any of these. The Catholic church looking at this very carefully has concluded that it is entirely ethical and moral for Christians to take advantage of these vaccines because of their potential to be lifesaving. And that you taking part in that is not complicit with any kind of actions that happened 50 or 60 years ago. And you can be totally pro-life and also roll up your sleeve.
PROF CHANG: Dr. Collins, you're well-known as a follower of Jesus but some people think that faith in Jesus and faith in science are in opposition, can you speak to that?
DR. COLLINS: I would love to speak to that because it is truly unfortunate that there is this sense that science and faith are in conflict. I became a Christian at age 27. People said to me, 'cause I was always already on a path to be a physician and a scientist that my head was going to explode. It never happened. I see these as wonderfully complementary and harmonious. Science allows us to investigate God's creation and being a scientist is also an opportunity to be a person who worships what God has done by creating nature around us. You have to think about what kind of question you're asking whether science or faith is the way to approach it. But I think I agree with Francis Bacon who said we were given two books, the book of God's words, the Bible, which I study every morning and the book of God's works, this amazing complex, beautiful creation which we also have the chance through science to understand and to use that even for the purpose of healing which I believe also is part of God's intention. There's no conflict here.