page_title: James Watson
section_title: Human Genome Project
hierarchical_section_title: James Watson / Career and research / Human Genome Project
caption_attribution_description: English: One of the co-discoverers of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) with Francis Crick. Between 1988-1992, Dr. Watson was associated with the National Institutes of Health helping to establish the Human Genome Project.
context_page_description: James Dewey Watson KBE is an American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". In subsequent years, it has been recognized that Rosalind Franklin did not receive full credit for her contributions to the discovery of the double helix structure.
  Watson earned degrees at the University of Chicago and Indiana University. Following a post-doctoral year at the University of Copenhagen with Herman Kalckar and Ole Maaløe, Watson worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he first met his future collaborator Francis Crick. From 1956 to 1976, Watson was on the faculty of the Harvard University Biology Department, promoting research in molecular biology.
  From 1968 Watson served as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, greatly expanding its level of funding and research.
context_section_description: In 1990, Watson was appointed as the Head of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, a position he held until April 10, 1992. Watson left the Genome Project after conflicts with the new NIH Director, Bernadine Healy. Watson was opposed to Healy's attempts to acquire patents on gene sequences, and any ownership of the "laws of nature." Two years before stepping down from the Genome Project, he had stated his own opinion on this long and ongoing controversy which he saw as an illogical barrier to research; he said, "The nations of the world must see that the human genome belongs to the world's people, as opposed to its nations." He left within weeks of the 1992 announcement that the NIH would be applying for patents on brain-specific cDNAs. (The issue of the patentability of genes has since been resolved in the US by the US Supreme Court; see Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office)
  In 1994, Watson became President of CSHL. Francis Collins took over the role as Director of the Human Genome Project.
  He was quoted in The Sunday Telegraph in 1997 as stating: "If you could find the gene which determines sexuality and a woman decides she doesn't want a homosexual child, well, let her." The biologist Richard Dawkins wrote a letter to The Independent claiming that Watson's position was misrepresented by The Sunday Telegraph article, and that Watson would equally consider the possibility of having a heterosexual child to be just as valid as any other reason for abortion, to emphasise that Watson is in favor of allowing choice.
  On the issue of obesity, Watson was quoted in 2000, saying: "Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them."
  Watson has repeatedly supported genetic screening and genetic engineering in public lectures and interviews, arguing that stupidity is a disease and the "really stupid" bottom 10% of people should be cured. He has also suggested that beauty could be genetically engineered, saying in 2003, "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."
  In 2007, James Watson became the second person to publish his fully sequenced genome online, after it was presented to him on May 31, 2007, by 454 Life Sciences Corporation in collaboration with scientists at the Human Genome Sequencing Center, Baylor College of Medicine. Watson was quoted as saying, "I am putting my genome sequence on line to encourage the development of an era of personalized medicine, in which information contained in our genomes can be used to identify and prevent disease and to create individualized medical therapies".
caption: Watson in 1992
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