God help him indeed.

"Oh my Jesus forgive us our sins and save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy Mercy"
henry o | 06.30.04 - 6:04 pm | #

wow
Paul Scheibmeir | 06.30.04 - 6:34 pm | #

'Most mothers wouldn't want to have dwarfs'.. except perhaps for
Toulouse-Lautrec's mother?

What about Stephen Hawking's mother? Obviously inferior stock, there.

Beethoven probably had a gene for deafness. Raus!

Milton for blindness. Away with him.

Or away with any person who makes another happy - if they don't look right to Watson.

If Watson is a moral dwarf - should his mother have put him out of his misery?

If Watson suffered a disfiguring disease - would he put himself out of his misery?

Watson is just another believer in racial purity, as defined by Watson. And Himmler. And Mengele. And Rosenberg. ad naus.
pavel chichikov | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 7:03 pm | #

``Watson looked me in the eye and told me he was qualified to advocate in favor of mothers choosing to abort "unhealthy" children because he wished he could have aborted his own son, who is mentally handicapped.''

I pity his son, living with a father who wishes he were dead. (I hope Mrs. Watson is made of sterner stuff.) I also wonder how he defines ``unhealthy.'' How do you think he'd deal with a child who developed diabetes or emotional problems at the age of, say, ten? A pillow over the face? Lethal injection?

``Profoundly evil.'' There's really nothing to add to that.
Anne Butzen | 06.30.04 - 7:05 pm | #

Correct me if I am wrong, but if I remember correctly Hitler also advocated murdering the disabled.
Ben | 06.30.04 - 7:39 pm | #

I forget if it is Watson or Crick who have weird views on evolution/creation. Guess (which ever one) recognizes the short-comings in materialistic creationism, so has converted to a creation belief. That is life on earth was created by space aliens.
dpt | 06.30.04 - 7:41 pm | #

Anyone who's read THE DOUBLE HELIX knows what a monstrous ego Watson has. And decades ago he was advocating "conditional humanity" for newborns so that their parents would have a grace period in which to decide to kill them.
Sandra Miesel | 06.30.04 - 7:47 pm | #

Should have given the prize to the lady who actually did the work.
Anonymous | 06.30.04 - 7:53 pm | #

Have Watson and Crick actually accomplished anything else scientifically after their discovery of the double helix structure of DNA?

My heart breaks for his son, also. Imagine having a father that not only wishes you had never been born but who says so in public!
Karen Howard | 06.30.04 - 7:53 pm | #

Beethoven was the prime example used against the eugenists, many of whom would have, on hearing his family's history, aborted him without a second thought.

Does he actually have custody of the son?
Mary | 06.30.04 - 8:19 pm | #

Crick's the one who advocates life being seeded by aliens... He also wants to define human consciousness in totally material terms. His plans were the subject of an article in the NY Times a few months back--I'd link to it but it's no longer free access. What a pity that two of the men most responsible for modern molecular biology are so "profoundly evil".
Chad | 06.30.04 - 10:26 pm | #

You are correct, Ben, but Hitler did more than advocate murdering the disabled. He *did* murder the disabled, as many as 275,000 of them.

And he ordered the murders started in 1939, using techniques (centralized mass death camps, gas chambers disguised as showers) that would later be used in his final solution to the "problem" of other "biological enemies".

Watson is a monster, and I fear for the weak under the eugenic/genespliced/transhumanist regime he helped create.
SparcVark | 06.30.04 - 10:43 pm | #

"Correct me if I am wrong, but if I remember correctly Hitler also advocated murdering the disabled."

I had been doing a lot of research into eugenics and came across a book called Origins of Nazi Genocide by Henry Friedlander. It was a description of the T-4 program that Hitler started long before the war. The Nazis developed the gas chamber technology on the handicapped. Parents were induced to send their children to hospitals for the unfit where they were starved to death of injected with drugs. criminals and other wards of the state were killed while the judges looked the other way.

That book told me everything I needed to know about what is now politely called "bioethics" in hospitals. The last person killed by the program died a few days *after* the war was over. Nothing Watson is saying is new.
hilary | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 11:24 pm | #

Hitler went for the disabled first.

Consider these math problems, used in text books. (I operate from memory, so the numbers are made up, but the gist of the problems is from Rachel Weeping.)

A mental institution was built for 230,000RM. How many houses at 15,000RM apiece could have been built for that sum?

An able-bodied man can produce 10RM work a day, a moron can produce 3RM, an imbecile costs 2RM and a lunatic 7RM. Depict these numbers in a bar graph.

570,000 RM was spent on the incurably insane in 19xx. How many loans could have been made to newly weds, of 10,000 RM apiece, with a quarter of the loan forgiven after the birth of each child? (Humm. I don't remember the book citing the birth statistics to use, which would be necessary to compute this one.)
Mary | 07.01.04 - 12:18 am | #

Wouldn't be so easy to wish away what was not convient to us? Wouldn't be so easy to have the government solve our problems? Wouldn't it be so easy to .....


That thought pattern doesn't end, unless you don't believe in eternity, which applies here.

I fear a world in which the here and now is the moral force. God have mercy and spare us from this.
Kathleen | 07.01.04 - 12:51 am | #

Watson's partner, Crick, did a lot of follow-up work on the genetic code after developing the DNA model. He has also theorised on the workings of the brain, although not to great effect I think.

Watson did write a very influential textbook, The Molecular Biology of the Gene.

People have referred in these comments, obliquely, to Rosalind Franklin. She did do a lot of the background work that permitted Watson and Crick to solve the structure of DNA in one final insight, after having worked on the problem for some time.

Watson and Crick were probably lucky that "Nature" published their purely theoretical paper. However it WAS a brilliant insight - and great "show business" too. Science, and science journals, have their showbiz side.

One of my children is mentally disabled (autism). I would never have wanted her not born. I feel sorry for Watson saying that about his son. And I feel sorry for his son.

I might add that some of Crick's views are pretty weird too. They belonged to a generation of scientists who seemed to glory in their inhumanity.

Julian
Julian O'Dea | Homepage | 07.01.04 - 2:46 am | #

Too much time in the sun- burned away part of his soul. Too many accolades and prizes and see what a smart guy I am. No one around him to say when he overloads on fecal matter. Involved in research with roots in Margaret Sanger's efforts to cull the races. As the Good Book notes pride goeth before a fall. Looks like he has one foot off the Eternal Cliff. But that's the sentiments of a blithering religious fool- always liked the term Jesus Christer coined by another of his Egghead Class, Gore Vidal. Also with the same Foot Off Cliff syndrome.
Gerard E. | 07.01.04 - 7:11 am | #

IIRC, one of the main reasons Dr Franklin did not share in the Nobel Prize was that the Nobel is not awarded posthumously. She died of ovarian cancer at the age of 37, four years before Watson and Crick got the Prize. Of course, they didn't take that opportunity to thank her either.
Peony Moss | Homepage | 07.01.04 - 8:05 am | #

Dokter Vatson is bald. I wonder if we can off him for that defect? As an "unbeliever," I am sure he would have no moral qualms about being killed. Take one for the team!!
c matt | 07.01.04 - 9:27 am | #

The most poignant part of the German euthanasia program is that some of the very first subjects were their own disabled veterans from the first war.
Ed | 07.01.04 - 10:05 am | #

What can one add to the above comments. except to say "amen" ... and "profoundly evil" indeed, not to say monstrous. As others have said, i feel so sorry for his son ... o my God, have mercy on him indeed.
Patricia Gonzalez | 07.01.04 - 10:10 am | #

I wonder if it is possible to pray to Gregor Medel for his conversion? Anyone know?

I could be wrong.
Jamie | 07.01.04 - 11:29 am | #

I fisked Watson over on my blog. Stop on by, if ya lahk.

http://veniaminov.blogspot.com/2004/07/dr-james- ogre-watson-on-life-beautiful.html
Geistesweisheit | Homepage | 07.01.04 - 11:53 am | #

This guy obviously suffers from a brain defect that disallows the recognition of any compassion.

He should've been aborted...

In his shallow little world, at least.
JonathanR. | 07.01.04 - 1:06 pm | #

This is really upsetting. My eldest, age 10, has a neurological condition called apraxia which seriously impacts his speech and coordination. If this Watson were to ever meet him, I'm sure he'd label him the village idiot or a useless eater or something. But it just so happens the "useless eater" scores in the 120's on IQ tests, and would probably test higher except for the fine motor skill portions of it. Please God my son will someday go on and put his intellect to use for good, in the genuine service of God and mankind. Watson has clearly been blessed by God in the intellect department, and it is horrible to see the way he's decided to apply it.
Margaret | 07.01.04 - 3:11 pm | #

The man is bitter that for all his knowledge of genetics he has a handicapped son. I just hope for the sake of his son that his position is a mask to hide his disappointments.

People like Watson do a great service in that they show what a true materialistic ideology is like. After hearing him, one realises that the ultimate protection for the weakest members of society is the Biblical injunction "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom".
Anonymous | 07.01.04 - 4:21 pm | #