News and Events
NEI Statement
Statement by Dr. Paul A. Sieving, National Eye Institute Director, on the Nomination of Dr. Francis Collins to the Position of NIH Director
National Eye Institute
National Institutes of Health
I am pleased that President Obama has chosen to nominate Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., to be the next NIH director. As a clinician-scientist with medical genetics expertise, Dr. Collins possesses a keen understanding of the need for science, policy and public health to align to improve lives of people affected by inherited diseases, including those related to vision.
In a 2005 keynote lecture at the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s annual meeting, Dr. Collins addressed thousands of Academy members regarding the changing scope of clinical care for physicians. He stated that “clearly, ophthalmologists are at the leading edge of this revolution. The Human Genome Project, which mapped and sequenced all human DNA, has dramatically accelerated efforts to uncover the genetic mutations responsible for eye diseases.”
On a personal level, I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Collins while we were both faculty members at the University of Michigan before he assumed his NIH position in 1993. I had the first-hand opportunity to witness his knowledge and appreciation of medical genetics and personalized medicine as it relates to vision conditions. I now look forward to forging new avenues for studying eye and vision disorders with him in these exciting times of gene-based discoveries.
The National Eye Institute (NEI) is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is the federal government's lead agency for vision research that leads to sight-saving treatments and plays a key role in reducing visual impairment and blindness. For more information, visit the NEI Website at http://www.nei.nih.gov.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) - The Nation's Medical Research Agency - includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.
