What's New Friday October 26, 2007

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 26 Oct 07   Washington, DC

1. WATSON RESIGNS: THE SECRET OF LIFE?  IT’S TOO SHORT.
In a pub near Cavendish Lab in 1953 Francis Crick raised his glass and 
announced to all present, "we have discovered the secret of life."  And 
they had.  The world would never be the same.  James Watson, 79, is best 
known to the public for his book, The Double Helix, that recounts the 
discovery of the structure of DNA. He resigned yesterday as head of Cold 
Spring Harbor Laboratory, which he built into a great research institute.  
Controversy endures over Rosalind Franklin’s role in DNA, for which Watson 
gave her scant credit.  She died before the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine 
was awarded to Watson, Crick and Wilkins.  There was controversy again 
when Watson resigned as head of the human genome project in a dispute with 
NIH director Bernadine Healy, who wanted to patent gene sequences.  Those 
controversies were tame compared to the one that erupted last week; he was 
quoted in the Times of London as suggesting people of African descent are 
less intelligent than Europeans.  I don’t know what he was thinking.  An 
abject apology won’t undo it.   

2. ENVIRONMENT: MAJOR U.N. REPORT SAYS IT’S "UNSUSTAINABLE."
According to a story in the New York Times this morning, a report issued 
by the United Nations yesterday in Paris is so frightening that French 
President Nicolas Sarkozy immediately put $1.4 billion into new energy 
sources and biodiversity.  Unsustainable consumption of resources and 
population growth is taking Earth beyond the point of no return.  As an 
example, the report says, two and a half times as many fish are being 
caught as the oceans can produce in a sustainable manner.  No word yet 
from Washington on the U.S. response.  No steps taken to protect the 
environment will help in the long run if population continues to grow.

3. INTERROGATIONS: BUSH DEFENDS INTERROGATION METHODS.  
Earlier this month there was a remarkable reunion at Fort Hunt, VA of 
surviving members of the group responsible for interrogating Nazi 
prisoners of war.  All in their 80s and 90s, they are shocked at the 
methods reportedly used today.  Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist, told 
Petula Dvorak of the Washington Post that he had been assigned to play 
chess with Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess.  They took prisoners out to steak 
dinners and played ping-pong with them - and got information out of them.  
During WWII when the news carried reports of torture by the Nazis, people 
would shake their heads and say "you couldn’t get American boys to do 
that." Now we know you could. The President insists "we don’t torture."  
The only way he could be sure would be to submit to "waterboarding."  

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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