Watson, co-discoverer of DNA’s double-helix structure, is known for his…outspoken opinions. In A Conversation with James D. Watson, he shares some of them:
I think there’s something in me of that same weakness that is so apparent in [tennis champion] John McEnroe. I just can’t sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it’s nonsense!
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I think they’re so contentious that the state shouldn’t enter in. Yes, I would just stay out of it, the way it should stay out of abortion. Reproductive decisions should be made by women, not the state.I mean, cloning now is the issue. But the first clone is not like the first nuclear bomb going off. It’s not going to hurt anyone!
If your health were lousy and your wife’s health were lousy, and [the genetic illness] were in both your families, maybe you’d like to have a child who was healthy. I know a famous French scientist who never had children because there was madness in his family. He didn’t want to take a chance on more madness. That’s what I mean. Cloning might mean you would know there wasn’t going to be any more madness. I think the paramount concern should be the rights of the family, as opposed to the rights of the state.
People say, “Well, these would be designer babies,” and I say, “Well, what’s wrong with designer clothes?” If you could just say, “My baby’s not going to have asthma,” wouldn’t that be nice? What’s wrong with therapeutic cloning? Who’s being hurt?
There’s a mysticism about life. It’s very understandable, if you’re not a scientist, that you just can’t quite see how it could all be molecules, and how you could start with this and end up with human consciousness and our complexity. Since we still don’t know how the brain works, people say that we don’t have it right. All we can say is, we don’t think there’s any spirit in a bacterium.
I remember when [physicist] Dick Feynman and I got identical letters back in 1964 from a California rabbi asking about our spiritual beliefs. I think Dick just wrote back that he had none. I was more polite because I wasn’t Jewish [and didn't want to offend the rabbi], but I think that Dick could say what he thought. The problem in the United States is, it’s not socially acceptable to be against god. Can religion ever be bad? That’s not to be discussed. But in Europe it can be.