Covid lockdown campaigner and former head of the National Institutes of Health Frances Collins revealed he is battling prostate cancer.
The doctor described his ordeal in a personal essay in which he described the “aggressive” diagnosis of prostate cancer about a month ago.
Dr. Collins, 73, who served as head of the NIH from 2009 to 2021 and is credited with leading the groundbreaking Human Genome Project, The doctors told him his cancer was a “9 on a scale that only goes to 10” in terms of how aggressively the cancer was multiplying.
But a scan showed his cancer had not spread beyond the tumor on his prostate gland – suggesting the cancer is not life-threatening.
The opinion piece by Dr. Collins in the Washington Post comes a day after disgraced football starter OJ Simpson died of the same disease.
Dr. Francis Collins, President Biden’s top science adviser, championed blanket lockdowns in the early days of Covid but has since admitted those measures have harmed millions of Americans.
Dr. Collins describes his battle against aggressive prostate cancer in a new personal essay. His cancer has not progressed beyond the prostate and surgery to remove the entire gland is expected to cure him
The fact that it does not spread is welcome news, as the cancer has a five-year survival rate of 32 percent once it has spread to other parts of the body.
Dr. Collins is hailed as a pioneer in the field of genetic research, having led the way in completing a completed series 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 his efforts with Dr. Anthony Fauci to undermine dissent over the origins of Covid, which may have come from a laboratory leak.
He was a staunch supporter of the Covid-era lockdowns that kept millions of people from work, school and socializing, hurting children’s learning in the long term and wreaking havoc on Americans’ mental health.
He was previously reported to have dismissed the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan as a “conspiracy” in a message to Dr. Anthony Fauci in recently released emails.
He also helped orchestrate the removal of the Great Barrington Declaration, a treatise written by infectious disease physicians that advocated a more targeted approach to lockdowns, looking only at the communities most vulnerable to serious disease , such as seniors.
The former NIH boss until 2021, who now serves as President Joe Biden’s chief scientific adviser, 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 Scattered.
Prostate cancer, which claimed the life of disgraced footballer OJ Simpson on Thursday, is the second most common cancer in men after skin cancer. The disease arises from cancer cells in the prostate, a gland the size of a walnut that only occurs in men.
Dr. Collins, who will soon undergo surgery to remove his prostate, wrote about his struggle in hopes of inspiring more men to be proactive about their health.
He said: ‘Further biopsies from the mass showed a transformation into a much more aggressive form of cancer. When I heard that the diagnosis was now a 9 on a cancer scale that only goes up to 10, I knew everything had changed.’
A possible problem was noticed about five years ago, when his doctor noticed an increase in prostate-specific antigens (PSA) in his blood.
PSA is a protein produced by the prostate that, when higher than about four nanograms per milliliter of blood, can indicate cancer.
Dr.’s PSA Collins started climbing five years ago, reaching 22 about a month ago.
He said: ‘So that PET scan, which was ordered to determine whether the cancer had spread beyond the prostate, had great significance. Would healing 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 wave of deep relief and gratitude. There was no detectable evidence of cancer outside the primary tumor.”
Dr. Collins had enrolled in an NIH study aimed at researching and treating prostate cancer, which included performing a DNA analysis on the tumor to guide therapies. He led that agency from 2009 to 2021.
At first there was nothing to worry about. Doctors followed an ‘active surveillance’ protocol that involves regular check-ups.
He wasn’t exactly surprised when he got his diagnosis. Dr. Collins’ father had prostate cancer and genetic factors drove this between 10 and 20 percent of prostate cancer.
In addition, prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed type among American men. About 40 percent of men in the US have low-grade prostate cancer, meaning they are unlikely to die from it.
Dr. Collins said: ‘My situation is much better than my father’s when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer 40 years ago.
‘He was about the same age as I am now, but it was not possible at the time to estimate how advanced the cancer was. He was treated with hormonal therapy which may not have been necessary and had a significant negative impact on his quality of life.”
Screening measures have improved since his father’s time, reflecting the mountain of additional information researchers have collected over the years.
The PSA test was introduced in the late 1980s and revolutionized prostate screening and testing.
The career of Dr. Collins as a physician-scientist spans four decades. He was sworn in as head of the NIH in 2009. He is pictured here on Charlie Rose in 1994
There has also been an increased emphasis on screening high-risk groups and people with certain genetic predispositions, which could allow more men to catch the disease early and give them the best chance of survival.
And active surveillance, the course Dr. Collins’ doctors initially took, is now the main treatment option for early-stage prostate cancer.
In his father’s day, doctors commonly resorted to surgical removal of the prostate gland, which was associated with incontinence and impotence.
Many patients would be offered surgery or radiation, which also have similar side effects, even if their cancer is slow growing and unlikely to cause damage during their lifetime.
Other treatments include chemotherapy, hormone therapies, and medications that use the body’s own immune system to fight the cancer.
However, there is still room for improvement when it comes to screening, Dr. Collins said. The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommends that all men ages 55 to 69 discuss screening and a PSA test with their doctor.
But the USPSTF does not recommend PSA screening after age 70 because it can lead to false-positive results that can lead to increased anxiety and possible overtreatment of a cancer that is unlikely to cause death.
Meanwhile, the American Urological Association is taking a more cautious approach, recommending screening at a younger age, especially if men have a family history of cancer, and for African-American men, who are more likely to get it.
Dr. Collins said, “Having been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and grateful for all the ways I have benefited from advances in research, 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 returned to public service when President Biden asked him to work on science initiatives in the White House in 2022.
Despite his stellar reputation as a scientist, Collins’ public image has been marred by the government’s poor response to the 2020 Covid outbreak.
The lockdowns from coast to coast had a major impact on American health and financial stability, losing millions of jobs and affecting hundreds of thousands of small businesses.
Researchers call the negative effects of lockdown measures on children’s mental health ‘time-defining’ and long-lasting.
The pandemic led to a spike in the number of children experiencing severe hopelessness and depression, caused by a combination of school closures and restrictions that kept them from friends and social media addiction.
Stanford scientists even found that the pandemic accelerated the aging process of teenagers’ brains.
Collins recently made headlines when videos surfaced a public lecture he gave with the bipartisan organization Braver Angels, in which he admitted the serious flaws of the lockdown policies he championed.
In the discussion, he said, “If you’re a public health person trying to make a decision, you have a very narrow view of what the right decision is, and that’s something that will save a life. It doesn’t matter what happens next. So you attach immense importance to stopping the disease and saving a life.
“You don’t care about whether this actually completely disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy and keeps a lot of kids out of school in a way that they never recover from.”
Lockdowns had a major knock-on effect on people’s access to preventative healthcare, such as prostate cancer screenings.
According to a 2023 report, the number of cases of advanced prostate cancer has been rising for years. increased by 3 percent per year from 2014 to 2019.
The main driver of this overall increase was the diagnosis of advanced disease, which has increased by 4 to 5 percent annually since 2011.
Experts estimate the disease will affect 300,000 American men this year and kill more than 35,000, most of whom are over 65.