Covid lockdown advocate and former head of the National Institutes of Health Frances Collins revealed that he is battling prostate cancer.
The doctor detailed his ordeal in a personal essay in which he described the ‘aggressive’ prostate cancer diagnosis about a month ago.
Dr Collins, 73, who was head of the NIH from 2009 to 2021 and is credited with leading the groundbreaking Human Genome Project, said doctors told him his cancer was a ‘9 on a scale that only goes to 10’ in terms of how aggressive it was multiplying.
But a scan that revealed his cancer had not spread beyond the tumor on his prostate gland – which suggests that the cancer is not life-threatening.
Dr Collins’ Washington Post op-ed comes one day after disgraced football start OJ Simpson died of the same disease.
Dr Francis Collins, President Biden’s chief science advisor, was a champion of blanket lockdowns in the early days of Covid, but has since admitted those measures harmed millions of Americans
Dr Collins detailed his battle with aggressive prostate cancer in a new personal essay. His cancer has not advanced beyond the prostate and a surgery to remove the whole gland is expected to cure him
fact it’s not spread which is welcome news because the cancer has a five-year survival rate of 32 percent once it has spread to other parts of the body.
Dr Collins has been hailed as a pioneer in genetics research, having spearheaded the achievement of completing a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book.
But his legacy has become more complicated in recent years thanks to his advocacy for Covid lockdown measures and efforts alongside Dr Anthony Fauci to quash dissenting opinions about Covid’s origins as possibly being from a lab leak.
He was was a staunch supporter of Covid-era lockdowns that kept millions of people away from work, school, and socializing, harming children’s learning long-term and wreaking havoc on Americans’ mental health.
He had previously been reported to have dismissed the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab as a ‘conspiracy’ in a message to Dr Anthony Fauci in recently-released emails.
He also helped orchestrate a takedown of the Great Barrington Declaration, a treatise written by infectious disease doctors that advocated for a more focused approach to lockdowns, looking only to the communities most vulnerable to severe disease like senior citizens.
The former boss of the NIH until 2021, who now serves as President Joe Biden’s chief science advisor, revealed that a scan about a month ago found the enlarged tumor in his prostate that may have spread beyond that point to other parts of his body.
Prostate cancer, which took the life of disgraced football player OJ Simpson on Thursday, is the second-most common form of cancer in men, just behind skin cancer. The disease forms from cancerous cells in the prostate, a walnut-sized gland only found in men.
Dr Collins, who will soon undergo surgery to remove his prostate, wrote about his struggle in the hopes of inspiring more men to be proactive about their health.
He said: ‘New biopsies taken from the mass showed transformation into a much more aggressive cancer. When I heard the diagnosis was now a 9 on a cancer-grading scale that goes only to 10, I knew that everything had changed.’
A possible issue was flagged about five years ago, when his doctor noticed a rise in his blood levels of prostate-specific antigens (PSA).
PSA is a protein made by the prostate that, when higher than about four nanograms per milliliter of blood, could indicate cancer.
Dr Collins’ PSA began to rise five years ago and hit 22 about a month ago.
He said: ‘Thus, that PET scan, which was ordered to determine if the cancer had spread beyond the prostate, carried high significance. Would a cure still be possible, or would it be time to get my affairs in order?
‘A few hours later, when my doctors showed me the scan results, I felt a rush of profound relief and gratitude. There was no detectable evidence of cancer outside of the primary tumor.’
Dr Collins had enrolled in an NIH study focused on researching and treating prostate cancer, which included taking a DNA analysis on the tumor to guide therapies. He led that agency from 2009 through 2021.
At first, there wasn’t anything to worry about. Doctors were following an ‘active surveillance’ protocol that entails regular checkups.
He was not exactly surprised to get his diagnosis. Dr Collins’ father had prostate cancer, and genetic factors drive between 10 and 20 percent of prostate cancers.
What’s more, prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed type among American men. Around 40 percent of men in the US have low-grade prostate cancer, meaning it likely won’t kill them.
Dr Collins said: ‘My situation is far better than my father’s when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer four decades ago.
‘He was about the same age that I am now, but it wasn’t possible back then to assess how advanced the cancer might be. He was treated with a hormonal therapy that might not have been necessary and had a significant negative impact on his quality of life.’
Screening measures have improved since his father’s day, a reflection of the mountain of additional information researchers have accrued over the years.
The PSA test was introduced in the late 1980s and revolutionized prostate screening and testing.
Dr Collins’ career as a physician-scientist spans four decades. He was sworn in as head of NIH in 2009. He is pictured here on Charlie Rose in 1994
There has also been greater emphasis on screening high-risk groups and people with certain genetic predispositions, helping more men catch the disease early and giving them the best chance at survival.
And active surveillance, the course Dr Collins’ doctors took at first, is now the leading management option for early stages of prostate cancer.
In his father’s day, doctors would typically jump ahead to surgical removal of the prostate gland, which has been associated with incontinence and impotence.
Many patients would be offered surgery or radiation, which also has similar side effects, even if their cancer was slow-growing and unlikely to cause harm within their lifetime.
Other treatments include chemotherapy, hormone therapies, and medicines that leverage the body’s own immune system to fight the cancer.
There is still room for improvement when it comes to screening, though, according to Dr Collins. The US Preventative Services Task Force recommends that all men ages 55 to 69 discuss screening and a PSA test with their primary doctor.
But the USPSTF recommends against PSA screening after age 70 because it can lead to false-positive results that could trigger greater anxiety and possible over-treatment of a cancer that is unlikely to kill them.
Meanwhile, the American Urological Association takes a more cautious approach, recommending screening at an earlier age especially if men have a family history of the cancer, and for nhanlambangcap (nhanlambangcap24h.com) African American men, who are more likely to get it.
Dr Collins said: ‘Having now received a diagnosis of aggressive prostate cancer and feeling grateful for all the ways I have benefited from research advances, I feel compelled to tell this story openly. I hope it helps someone. I don’t want to waste time.’
Collins had left the NIH in 2021 to retire. But he re-entered public service when tapped in 2022 by President Biden to work in the White House on science initiatives.
Despite his stellar reputation as a scientist, Collins’ public image has been marred by the government’s flawed response to the Covid outbreak in 2020.
