Francis Collins Cancer Quotations

Cancer is a disease of the genome. And that's what happens. You make mistakes in a cell somewhere in your body that causes it to start to grow when it should've stopped, and that's cancer. And those mistakes are mistakes of DNA.

People who are in a position of finding out that they're at risk for some illness, whether it's breast cancer, or heart disease, are afraid to get that information - even though it might be useful to them - because of fears that they'll lose their health insurance or their job.

More than 300 genes have been implicated in the diabolical transformation of normal cells into cancer cells, and that has led to major insights into cause, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and cure.

The time is right to bring the full power of genomics to bear on the problem of cancer. Waiting another two years would have been too long. The biological research planets are aligned.

We are still working with an incomplete compass. The time is right to bring the full power of genomics to bear on the problem of cancer.