The Language of Life

“The future of customized medicine is in your DNA; don’t wait until you are sick to learn why.” - Dr. Mehmet Oz, author of You: The Owner’s Manual“With fluid prose and compelling narratives, Francis Collins makes modern medical science vivid and accessible. This book sets out hope without hype, and will enrich the mind and uplift the heart.” - Jerome Groopman, M.D., Recanati Professor, Harvard Medical School, Author of How Doctors Think“His groundbreaking work has changed the very ways we consider our health and examine disease.” - President Barack Obama“The Language of Life has a universal message… . For someone so powerful, Collins has an engagingly modest and open style.” - The Guardian“The Language of Life is timely, current, and full of moving stories… . Collins’s excellent treatise empowers readers to understand the revolution, make use of it and push for policy change… . Collins’s writing is so deceptively lucid that you hardly realize you are receiving a serious education.” - Nature“The Language of Life provides the interested reader an accurate snapshot of our current understanding of human genetics as it relates to personal health and well-being… . Collins offers clear explanations of nearly all the technologies that are driving the personal medicine revolution, from traditional linkage genetics to second-generation DNA sequencing and genome-wide association studies… . As Collins himself says, by the time you have read the book you will probably know more than your physician about genetics and health. So to avoid such an indictment, physicians had better read the book as well.” - Science“Collins writes as a scientist with a passion for medical progress, but, as a doctor, he communicates well and has compassion for individual patients today… . Collins is a uniquely placed guide for such medical and moral issues alike.” - The Financial Times“An excellent book… . Collins is a highly knowledgeable guide to an emerging area of medicine that … is still progressing with revolutionary fervour… . Collins gives an impressively up-to-date treatment of the genetics of cancer, race, infectious disease, ageing, the brain and our varying responses to drugs.” - New Scientist“Man’s knowledge of man is undergoing the greatest revolution since Leonardo, and Francis Collins is at the leading edge of it. I am a better doctor today because Dr. Collins was my genetics professor in medical school, and now, the world gets to benefit from his wisdom by reading The Language of Life.” - Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Neurosurgeon at Emory University and Chief Medical Correspondent for CNN“Fascinating… . A medical revolution is upon us and bestselling author Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, does a fabulous job of explaining its dimensions… . Collins presents cutting-edge science for lay readers who want to take control of their medical lives. In an enjoyable form, he discusses cancer, obesity, aging, racial differences, and a host of other concerns… . By using case studies throughout, he does a superb job of humanizing a complex scientific and medical subject.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review, PW Pick of the Week)

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is a pioneer gene hunter. He spent fifteen years as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, where he led the international Human Genome Project to a successful completion. For his revolutionary contributions to genetic research he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, and the National Medal of Science in 2009. He is the Director of the National Institutes of Health.