Dr. James Watson's Contradicting Statements on Ethics

I greatly appreciate the efforts that the Houston Holocaust Museum has done putting on the lecture series "Science and Medicine: After the Holocaust". Both the speakers, Dr. James Watson and Dr. Eric Kandel, were great. But for me the most interesting thing in the lecture was Watson's notion of "good" genes and "bad" genes and that somehow "the guys of Nazi Germany were not like us" in some special way. I was troubled by Watson's vocabulary and tone, when in part, he was there to confess the eugenics "wrongs" of Cold Spring Harbor from past times (1908'ish) and to which institution he is now president. Nazi Germany was not particularly backward, especially in science. In fact the lecture series is to remind us of that! The vocabulary in the discussion maybe at the root of the mislabeling or misperception. For example Watson speculated that genes "may well make a person dispositioned to criminal activity", which if one believed is true, that would presumably label that group of genes "bad". Some of those genes may in fact be biological related to some signaling pathway that "endeavors people to deep love and loyalty" (my hypothetical speculation). I believe that whole line of reasoning is flawed. Genes are genes, and have a phenotype (to the extent that it can be classified and quantitatively measured) but do not absolve a persons moral responsibility. People do "good" and "bad" in the context of the biology encoded in genes and experience, but human history encoded in literature would testify that each persons response to a similar genetic "predisposition" (I hate the phrase… need a new one!) is as divers as the challenges people face.


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