NIH Director Highlights Aversion Of American Students To Hard Science

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – It’s difficult to break through Americans’ aversion to hard science, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said in recent comments at the National Press Club Luncheon.

Fifteen-year-olds in the United States ranked 29th in science achievement among other 15-year-olds in 57 countries, he said Friday.

Nearly half of all U.S. 12th graders scored below basic in sciences, while a survey of American students found 84 percent would rather go to the dentist, eat their vegetables or clean their rooms than do their math homework.

The audience roared with laughter but Collins insisted that it’s a serious issue.

Collins, who sees himself as an advocate for science, tries to explain the complex and technical to a larger society of non-scientists.

“The future of biomedical research is in danger because of something we’re not doing. We’re not doing a good job in cultivating the next generation of scientists,” Collins said.

Talking of scientific advances, Collins told his Press Club audience he “literally got cold chills” reading a scientific paper on a breakthrough that uses cell plasticity to change a skin cell to a neuron or an islet cell in the pancreas.

In his capacity as the director of the National Institutes of Health, Collins oversees a $30 billion budget, 325,000 university researchers and 6,000 NIH scientists at 27 institutes and centers devoted to finding answers to some of the world’s most pressing medical and scientific problems.

The NIH is the world’s largest biomedical research organization and the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research.

Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, NIH has more than 18,000 employees on the main campus and satellite locations around the country and invests $30 billion annually in medical research.??

An elected member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, Collins was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Obama in October.

In 2007, President Bush presented Collins with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his breakthroughs in decoding the human genome.    ? 

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