Francis Collins, MD, PhD, the Obama-appointed director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 2009, will stay on in his post, at least temporarily, at the request of the new president's transition team. His retention was announced January 19 by the NIH.
"We can confirm that Dr Francis Collins has been held over as the NIH director by the Trump administration," Renate Myles, chief of the NIH's News Media Branch, told Medscape Medical News. "We have no additional details at this time."
According to a report in The Washington Post , the physician-geneticist met last week with then-President-elect Trump in New York.
On December 2, four influential Republicans sent a letter to President-elect Trump urging him to retain Dr Collins, calling him "the right person, at the right time to continue to lead the world's premier biomedical research agency."
Dr Collins, who presided over the response to the recent Ebola and Zika crises, said in a November interview with Medscape Medical News that he would "supply my letter of resignation" by January 20 "as required by all presidential appointees," but was noncommittal as to his future with the NIH.
He recently told STAT , though, that he would like to stay on as director but assumed, as per precedent, that he would be returning full time to his NIH genetics laboratory. The discoverer of several key genes in diseases such as type 2 diabetes, progeria, and cystic fibrosis, Dr Collins was a pivotal leader in the Human Genome Project.
Other reported candidates for the directorship are Republican congressman Andy Harris, MD, an anesthesiologist, and Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, a surgeon and businessman.
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Cite this: Francis Collins, MD, to Stay On as NIH Director Under Trump - Medscape - Jan 20, 2017.