Francis Collins On Faith And Lab Leak
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2025
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Francis is a physician and geneticist whose work has led to the discovery of the cause of cystic fibrosis, among other diseases. In 1993 he was appointed director of the Human Genome Project, which successfully sequenced all three billion letters of our DNA. He went on to serve three presidents as the director of the National Institutes of Health. The author of many books, including The Language of God, his latest is The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust.
Our conversation was entirely agreeable until we talked about trust, and his own handling of the Covid epidemic. I asked him in depth about the lab-leak theory and why he and Tony Fauci passionately dismissed it from the get-go, even as it now appears to be the likeliest source of the terrible virus. Things got intense.
For two clips of our convo — intense debate on the “Proximal Origin” paper outright denying a lab leak as the source of Covid-19, and Francis finding God after decades of atheism — pop over to our YouTube page.
Other topics: growing up on a rustic farm in Shenandoah; his parents creating a community theater; homeschooled until 6th grade; his amazing scientific accomplishments as a young adult; his scientism; his terminally ill Christian patients; the AIDS crisis; C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity; the First Mover question; Ross Douthat and “fine-tuning”; the multiverse; the limits to the materialist view; deism; cradle believers vs converts; evolution and sacrificial altruism; Socrates; Jesus dying for our sins; the doubting Thomas; how angels manifest; Francis Bacon; Richard Dawkins; being the NIH director during Covid; trust and mistrust in science; the early confusion in pandemics; tribalism; dismal safety standards at the Wuhan lab; gain-of-function; EcoHealth and Peter Daszak; intel agencies on lab leak; furin cleavage sites; Kristian Andersen; geopolitical fears over Trump and China; the opacity of the CCP; the Great Barrington Declaration; Trump threatening science funding at the Ivies; In Covid’s Wake; and if Francis has any regrets after Covid.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Claire Lehmann on the woke right, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee on Covid’s political fallout, Byron York on Trump 2.0, Robert Merry on President McKinley, Sam Tanenhaus on Bill Buckley, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on the Biden years, and Paul Elie on his book The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to [email protected].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hey everyone. |
| 0:29.4 | Welcome to another just cast in the era of Trump 2.0 as we slog our way through the next four years. |
| 0:39.1 | Happily, there are lots of interesting things to engage us even while we're under that ordeal. |
| 0:45.7 | Thank you so much for subscribing. |
| 0:47.6 | We've had a real role lately. |
| 0:49.3 | The Mike White podcast was a huge hit. |
| 0:52.6 | Of course, The White Lotus is the subject everyone's talking about. |
| 0:56.4 | Coming up, Paul Eli, my old friend, is doing a book on called The Last Supper, Art, Faith, Sex, |
| 1:02.4 | and Controversy in the 1980s, a really interesting throwback to a time when faith and secularism |
| 1:10.5 | were in some, and art were in some conflict. And Paul |
| 1:14.9 | is, as you may know, a Catholic scholar. And that period, whether it was from Mapleshorpe onwards, |
| 1:22.6 | was highly touchy for Catholics. But anyway, he was growing up as a faithful Catholic, and this is his response to the period. But today, we have another believer. I know you're sick of all the Christians showing up here, but nonetheless, we do have one, and a very special one, because not just a Christian, but one of the most extraordinary scientists of his generation. |
| 1:45.9 | Francis Collins. I always want to say Francis X Collins, but that means that you're |
| 1:49.5 | Catholic and you're not a Catholic, but that's what, whenever I see Francis, I always |
| 1:52.8 | Francis X, because that's people I grew up with. But anyway, Francis Collins is a physician |
| 1:57.1 | and geneticist whose work led to the discovery of the cause of cystic fibrosis, |
| 2:03.5 | among other diseases. |
| 2:04.7 | There are people living today, good, healthy, wonderful lives because of this man's work. |
| 2:10.9 | I am one of the people, having gone through the AIDS epidemic and observed closely, |
| 2:17.0 | your good friend Tony Fauci, do amazing work |
| 2:20.1 | following science in creating these extraordinary new drugs. |
| 2:25.3 | The first time a retrovirus was ever stopped, and it still is the only retrovirus that has been |
... |
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