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Francis Collins: One year at the helm

Nature volume 466, pages 808–810 (2010)Cite this article

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Having taken on the biggest job in biomedicine — leading the US National Institutes of Health — Francis Collins must now help his agency over a funding cliff. Meredith Wadman looks at his record so far, and his plans to cushion the fall.

There were three scans of Francis Collins's genome, and all showed the same thing: the geneticist and physician has an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. After Collins received the results from the genetic-testing companies in the spring of 2009, shortly before he became director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), he hired a personal trainer and began working out three times a week. He jettisoned his favourite junk food — honey buns and oversized muffins — in exchange for yoghurt, granola bars and broccoli. The 60-year-old now dead lifts 48 kilograms, chest presses 43, and has lost more than 11 kilograms himself. "It has helped me a lot in terms of being able to take on the intensity of the job," he says.

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  1. Meredith Wadman
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Online extra: Click here for Collins's biographical timeline

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Wadman, M. Francis Collins: One year at the helm. Nature 466, 808–810 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/466808a

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