1.1 James D. Watson — Welcome

James D. Watson: [00:00:00] This should be a truly exciting meeting. We had one on the history of DNA sequencing and all the technology developed two years ago. (1) It is extraordinary just how many people and how clever they have been, and that [00:00:30] the field molecular biology is just enormously successful for, now, more than 60 years and it shows no signs of slowing down. In sense the technology [CRISPR/Cas-9] one hopes will be another one. [00:01:00].

I just think of the cloning and DNA sequencing, boy, we would have never predicted that when we had the DNA structure. When we saw the structure I knew we'd get the Nobel Prize, but I never thought biology would have been thought of as important as physics. [chuckles] But it probably is! So it's been [00:01:30] a period when we've actually proven things. We don't have to have a weird string theory-like thing, where you can never even know whether you are right or wrong. And on the whole, there's been very little bullshit in the whole area. [00:02:00] It's been intelligent people saying intelligent things. And there were always one or two people at the time who were sort of out of fashion, and you never knew whether—like [Sol] Spiegelman (1914–1983). Was Spiegelman good or bad? I remember assigning a term paper at Harvard that had the title of “Spiegelman is right, or Spiegelman is wrong?” [00:02:30] All I can say is it's been fun and with almost with no villains.

Probably you know of a no greater success story than the one we're going to hear about today: not conquering AIDS but—[00:03:00] the American public is not worried about it, [sure] it’s not conquered [unintelligible 00:03:08] and then you would have been asking can you get HIV from groping? [laughter] I mean, the possibilities are great but I mean— [00:03:30] [laughter]

I probably wasn't at the first meeting that Bob Gallo gave because in the fall of 1986 I went off on a sabbatical in England, so I don't really remember anything about AIDS or the production of the book. (2) I know that the key people everyone was a lot of [00:04:00] fun to be with. I tell people, "Don't do anything which is not important," and of course HIV is very important, but nothing else is not fun. It just makes the whole thing much more human and nicer.

I'm thinking [00:04:30] now, well, what is the new thing Cold Spring Harbor should move to? I don't know anyone who could give it but we should probably give you a course on the mosquito. You know why? Mosquito-borne diseases are still there and not controllable. I think [00:05:00] that we have to anticipate what we're going to need, and I think it's people who work with insect viruses.

I had an idea—I don't have many ideas, but I was in Japan and learned of [00:05:32] interferon induced—oh, it'll come back to me. Basically, enzymes that break S-S bonds in order so you can have HLA cutting, and you should be able probably to get small molecule drugs that are really tailored for specific [00:06:00] disulfide bonds. That's my thought. I think interferon-alpha one of [unintelligible]. It probably works. If you ask why does something work on both DNA and RNA viruses are not against animal cells? Most of you don't know the interior cells have no S-S bonds. At least in the short time, you can go after the S-S bonds without feeling that sick. Anyways, probably I would say half of our lab has to be devoted to meeting practical needs, of which the Zika virus seems one. Right now I just won't go to the Caribbean . [00:07:00] Why when you can go to Paris  or something? [laughter]

The other thing which—I did say is nice if it never degenerated into a Salk-Sabin battle, which in a sense ruined them both [00:07:30] and then kept them from jointly getting a Nobel prize. Really the big triumphs of—and not all of them are molecular genetics, but biology [unintelligible 00:07:50] vaccines. Now people are trying to duplicate them for viruses but [00:08:00] I would like them to succeed except for all these [unintelligible 00:08:04] advertisements. Now you can't watch the evening news without some overstatement from some pharmaceutical company, and it's a bit scary. In the whole, the drug industry has the same integrity as Wells Fargo. [laughter] [00:08:30] It's scary. and I think back here people like Roy Vagelos (b. 1929) and [unintelligible] who was very admirable so it would be nice to go back to it. I had two political ideas. One is that education is incompatible [00:09:00] with capitalism and the function of schools is not to make money. That's what they're becoming. People are seizing them and [unintelligible 00:09:11] it's really destroying the integrity of—and college presidents are getting $5 million salaries so it stinks. It just stinks.

The other is medicine is incompatible with capitalism. [00:09:30] The function of a hospital is not to make money and have its administrators get large salaries. We're witnessing the taking over of medicine by hospital administrators and I don't know how we're going to stop it except by electing Bernie as president. I'm still rooting for him because I know Hillary won't change a thing. [00:10:00]  She'll do less damage than Donald and so I will admit I'll vote for her. 

On the other hand, as I'm sure the scientific [unintelligible 00:10:23], we seldom talk about ethics and whether it's right [00:10:30] or wrong. We just accept the way our country is going. We don't go to Washington anymore, we hire our own lobbyists to go to Capitol Hill so there are not enough people like Harold who went to Washington. We need more of them because they do set our policy. [00:11:00].

I've taken up 10 minutes being [unintelligible 00:11:01] take up [unintelligible 00:11:03] amount. I decided I won't go to a benefit for the Whaling Museum this evening, but I'll stay here. Thank you.

[applause]

[00:11:21] [END OF AUDIO]

Citations

1. See https://library.cshl.edu/Meetings/sequencing/

2. Gallo, Robert C., Myron Essex, Ludwik Gross, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, eds. Human T-Cell Leukemia/Lymphoma Virus: The Family of Human T-Lymphotropic Retroviruses, Their Role in Malignancies and Association with AIDS. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1984.

Index

• 2.4 Robert Gallo — Discoveries of Human Retrovirus, Their Linkage to Disease as Causative Agents & Preparation for the Future
• bioethics and medical ethics
• Caribbean and West Indies
• Clinton, Hillary (b. 1947)
• Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL)
• CRISPR-Cas9
• Harvard University, Harvard Medical School
• interferons
• Japan
• molecular cloning
• mosquito
• Paris
• pharmaceutical industry
• sequencing
• Spiegelman, Sol (1914–1983)
• Trump, Donald (b. 1946)
• Vagelos, P. Roy (b. 1929)
• Whaling Museum, Cold Spring Harbor
• Zika