DNA Episode 5 of 5 Pandora's Box PBS Documentary

Summary

In this episode of the PBS Documentary 'DNA', Jim Watson's groundbreaking work and controversial stance on genetic manipulation and eugenics are explored in-depth. The documentary delves into the scientific, moral, and ethical implications of controlling human DNA, revealing Watson's unwavering belief in improving human genetics. Despite his achievements, Watson's views stir public debate due to the potential social consequences and memories of the eugenics movement's dark history. Through various interviews and historical context, the episode provides a compelling yet unsettling look at the potential of genetic engineering.

Highlights

• Jim Watson's belief in DNA science leads to Nobel Prize-winning discoveries. 🏆
• He envisions a future where genetic manipulation is commonplace. 🔮
• Documentary explores the moral implications of genetic engineering through Watson's lens. 🤯
• Watson's stance recalls and revisits the controversial history of eugenics. 📜
• Interviews reveal both the potential benefits and dark sides of DNA control. ⚖️

Key Takeaways

• Jim Watson, despite criticism, remains a steadfast advocate for genetic engineering. 🧬
• His belief is that controlling DNA can eradicate genetic diseases and improve society. 🌍
• Watson's views are controversial due to associations with historical eugenics. 🤔
• There's a potential for DNA science to enhance human abilities, though ethical concerns loom large. 🚀
• Watson's legacy might be his unapologetic approach to scientific innovation, regardless of public opinion. 📚

Overview

Jim Watson, the groundbreaking scientist famed for his part in discovering the DNA double helix, spent much of his career advocating for increased control over human genetics. Through his brazenness and willingness to confront norms, he has led discussions on the ethical boundaries of genetic manipulation and the moral responsibilities that come with such technology. His journey is a testament to courage amidst controversy.

The documentary delves into the complex landscape where scientific potential meets ethical dilemmas. Covering both historical context and futuristic projections, it scrutinizes the delicate balance between beneficial innovation and moral restraint. Watson's interviews provide a candid insight into his philosophy, suggesting that DNA science is not just about curing diseases but also about enhancing human capabilities.

However, Watson's views trigger discomfort for many, with echoes of past eugenics errors surfacing throughout the discussion. The episode fosters critical thinking about where society should draw the line in genetic modifications, weighing between the possible eradication of genetic afflictions and the fear of repeating historical mistakes. It is a provocative exploration that challenges viewers to contemplate the future of humanity as they watch Watson navigate his scientific beliefs.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 06:00: Watson's Early Life and Discoveries The chapter "Watson's Early Life and Discoveries" highlights the foresight and determination of Jim Watson. It outlines how, at the age of 23, despite being advised by his superiors not to focus on DNA, Watson persisted and uncovered the structure of the double helix, leading to a Nobel Prize win. Furthermore, his autobiography, despite warnings about its candidness, became a best seller, showcasing his disregard for conventional advice and his success.
• 06:00 - 15:00: DNA Science and Genetic Engineering The chapter explores the ambitious ventures of Jim Watson in the field of DNA science and genetic engineering. Despite skepticism from the scientific establishment, Watson secures a three-billion-dollar investment from the US Congress to map the human genome. While he is celebrated for his track record in DNA science, his new vision for the future sparks controversy and concerns about his current judgment.
• 15:00 - 25:00: The History and Ethics of Eugenics The narrator reflects on the reluctance of most people to confront significant truths, suggesting that although they typically refrain from provoking others, there are moments when it's essential to voice one's thoughts.
• 25:00 - 39:00: Watson's Views on Genetic Disorders and Improvements The chapter explores the perspective of Watson on genetic disorders and potential improvements. It begins by highlighting that DNA, which is the controlling molecule of life, was largely unknown 50 years ago but is now being extensively studied. With the increasing understanding of DNA, new insights and possibilities are emerging, especially concerning genetic disorders.
• 39:00 - 55:30: Research and Advancements in DNA Science The chapter "Research and Advancements in DNA Science" explores the progress being made by DNA scientists in the field of genetic engineering. It highlights how scientists are approaching the possibility of genetically engineering human beings in the future, including selecting specific traits for future generations. The chapter emphasizes the advancing capabilities of DNA modifications, raising ethical questions and potential implications of such technological breakthroughs.

DNA Episode 5 of 5 Pandora's Box PBS Documentary Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 this young man seems to see the future throughout his life this will be the essence of jim watson's genius at 23 when his bosses tell him not to work on dna he ignores them he discovers the double helix and wins the nobel prize when he writes a book about his life his friends say it's too candid but he ignores them and publishes it anyway it's a best seller and he becomes a
• 00:30 - 01:00 millionaire when he begins his biggest venture the scientific establishment tell him it's not practical but he persuades the us congress to give him three billion dollars and now the human genome has been mapped when it comes to the future of dna science nobody has a better track record than jim watson but today he has a vision of the future that many find disturbing and some people wonder if this time his judgment has finally gone off the rails
• 01:00 - 01:30 i find myself you know realizing that most people don't want to hear important truths and so for the most part i don't try and annoy people but some occasions you just feel someone has to get up and say what you think
• 01:30 - 02:00 and that offends people dna is the molecule that controls life it's in every cell of every living thing 50 years ago almost no one knew of its existence but today the human race is unlocking its mysteries and when you understand something you
• 02:00 - 02:30 can start to control it [Music] dna scientists are moving ever closer to the day when genetically engineering people becomes possible choosing the characteristics of future
• 02:30 - 03:00 generations screening out the genetically undesirable designing our own dna the possibilities of this technology seem limitless but perhaps there are moral limits on what should and shouldn't be done who should make the decisions where do you draw the line we asked jim watson for a guided tour of the future a look into pandora's box with the person who opened it
• 03:00 - 03:30 we begin here at the world's leading producer of genetically modified foods their desire to enhance nature makes monsanto one of the most controversial companies in the world the purpose of a growth chamber is to provide an idealized environment for this reason many scientists would be apprehensive about coming here but not jim watson he loves gm food adult colorado potato beetles is on
• 03:30 - 04:00 display on that white where are the papers what monsanto does is add genes to their plants changing their genetic makeup to suit the farmer's needs we have here two carbon plants this is what a cotton plant would look like in the old days sick and diseased and there's nothing you want to see here
• 04:00 - 04:30 and here's one which has been genetically engineered to produce this protein which absorbs the insect guts and kills it and kills it quite fast within a day or so this is a perfect plant and if you wanted you know an insect dominated world this is it uh but this is a you know rational man's dominating world and to me this is the future what watson knows is that what has been
• 04:30 - 05:00 done in cotton and corn could one day be done in animals and people but even monsanto draws a line here okay so they're not trying to do transgenic animals in fact they've made a series of public pledges about things they will not do just plants and we won't put animal genes in plants it uh it obviates the problem of is it still vegetarian oh jesus
• 05:00 - 05:30 fortunately bacteria i sense the tide has changed and uh genetic manipulation will be more and more accepted a lot of people don't want the world to be changed but we shouldn't be too upset we just have to go on with our business we want to make the world better
• 05:30 - 06:00 you know there are people who say well we're playing god and you know i have a straightforward answer if we don't play god who will [Applause] watson has turned this picturesque harbor on the coast of long island into one of the world's leading genetic labs cold spring harbor laboratories
• 06:00 - 06:30 of which he is president watson lives on the grounds and has a 20-foot statue of the dna double helix in his front yard he's built a bell tower capped by the four letters of dna's genetic code this is watson's office
• 06:30 - 07:00 here one sees more evidence of his achievements that's the medal of freedom of the united states amongst these mementos and awards he explains what's at the heart of his philosophy one often hears area what right do you have to interfere with nature and but the nature out there isn't the product of a great design no one's written a book it's just evolution happening and
• 07:00 - 07:30 this evolution depends on random changes in genetic messages which make some organisms better able to survive and others not that able watson's science has shown that all living things are controlled by their dna code it's this four-letter code that makes not just plants and animals but people too and watson believes that random changes
• 07:30 - 08:00 in this code largely determine who we are and what we were able to do some were too short some are too tall some are too fast some are too thin so nature can be pretty cruel weather could be cruel [Music] our heredity can be cruel and that's why the old wooden buildings of cold spring harbor have been turned into laboratories where scientists work on dna ultimately the aim is to improve
• 08:00 - 08:30 the genes of future generations but if that idea rings alarm bells it might be because the concept has a dark history long before it was possible to manipulate dna in the laboratory there were people trying to change the characteristics of their descendants ironically the american center for this was cold spring harbor as watson reveals in his own archive
• 08:30 - 09:00 the first president of cold spring harbor was this man charles davenport and his passion was a subject that is frowned upon today here's the little pamphlet by charles davenport published in 1910 called eugenics and it was published for the ymca health league and the first chapter is called fit and unfit meetings and this is what davenport called
• 09:00 - 09:30 the science of human improvement by better breeding uh eugenics world had uh booths and agricultural fares in which you didn't display uh prize sheep but you displayed prize families and now it seems pretty ridiculous when you look at the pictures you can't really understand why anyone would call these prized people
• 09:30 - 10:00 the idea was if someone had a mental disease in the family uh you didn't want to marry into it so people hid mental disease you wouldn't want to admit that your aunt was a bit wacky the thing was the burden of the people-minded who was going to take care of them and people began to try and look how feeble-mindedness moved through families and at cold spring harbor they set up
• 10:00 - 10:30 the eugenics record station just to do masses of pedigrees they were going to prevent the unfit from taking over the world here's a an apparent five generation family where female mindedness just runs through the thing and you can see here f fff and i wonder how many of these kids went to school under what conditions and how
• 10:30 - 11:00 they were tested and who said this but this was the sort of thing which affected social policy the legislatures who really didn't understand the science or the the strength of it passed laws to sterilize the unfit incredibly as a result of davenport's eugenics forty thousand women were forcibly sterilized in the united states watson thinks he has an insight into how that could have happened
• 11:00 - 11:30 most people not only remember when there were the massive mental hospitals throughout the country throughout in fact the civilized world there was no treatment for mental illness the people went into them they never left and this was you know eugenics was i think the response to these large hospitals this makes watson more forgiving of the early eugenics movement than most it sounded like a good idea
• 11:30 - 12:00 and it wasn't i don't regard davenport as a an evil man by the end of his life you can say he did dreadful science and they were sort of telling the people there was science behind it and there wasn't science there was just someone fit people and how do you handle it in watson's mind this chapter of eugenics shows the harm that can be done when governments try to control the gene pool as it turned out enough people in america were against the policy and
• 12:00 - 12:30 davenport's work was stopped by the time the 1930s arrived many people effectively thought davenport had lost his bonkers you know eugenics was just silly prejudice unfortunately as a lost fever in the united states hitler came to power in germany and liked very much the ideas of the unfit and he wanted to get them out of german life watson has his own kind of eugenics based on his dna science
• 12:30 - 13:00 but he feels that people are prejudiced against it because of one other way eugenics was put into practice in the past the germans and the nazi government was there aimed to produce the pure aryan race broke the cardinal rule of civilization uh thou shall not kill so people they thought genetically
• 13:00 - 13:30 inferior they killed the name of genetics they killed and so in the public eye we will always be identified with the holocaust now here's the reichstag
• 13:30 - 14:00 jim watson is drawn to germany he's come here many times of all the countries on earth germany is the most hostile to genetic science probably as a reaction to its nazi past it's almost as though jim is in a personal battle with germany many germans feel that one of the lessons of the nazis is not to try to use genetics to improve the human race
• 14:00 - 14:30 but watson feels they need to come to terms with their past and then move on to embrace the new genetics he says the idea that people are the result of their genetic code is a truth that cannot be ignored when i walk down the street and think about my fellow human beings i see all them as products of that script that
• 14:30 - 15:00 but the products of several billion years of evolution where the script has become more and more refined so it finally says human being uh the imperfection is not any grand design it's just a mistake the scientific evidence on this is compelling already it's been shown that a single letter mistake in the genetic code causes diseases such as cystic fibrosis and thalassemia and it looks like
• 15:00 - 15:30 multiple mistakes cause complicated mental illnesses like schizophrenia and manic depression throughout history such people have been discriminated against for something that watson sees as just the result of a bad roll of the genetic dice there's no design these humans have no chance of really competing with most other humans so what do you do with the unfit
• 15:30 - 16:00 this is a mental hospital 60 miles outside berlin the place where the eugenics from cold spring harbor was taken a stage further
• 16:00 - 16:30 [Music] so hey just clearly to inspect that you could inspect what what's going on
• 16:30 - 17:00 watson is being shown around by his friend benno mueller hill who has studied the history of german genetics and that's right here and you see it looks first if you are if you are innocent you believe that this is in fact hot water which may come out of this but no no carbon monoxide is coming out of here fourteen thousand mentally ill people and disabled children were killed here
• 17:00 - 17:30 in the name of eugenics the the dead bodies were then taken out of here and one could get them out of here into a room where there is at the moment just one dissection table dragging them here on this almost on the floor do you think they felt they were
• 17:30 - 18:00 murdering people they couldn't see anything wrong with killing those incurable insane and they had learned us in the in the medical in the medical courses at the universities and so they couldn't see anything wrong this basement has been preserved as a museum to remind people of the nazi genetics i was active as somebody who was burning the corpses the the the the
• 18:00 - 18:30 earth would be always new filled above them the mental hospital carries on as normal and for watson the problem of the unfit remains and so does the argument of what should be done about it last year i was attacked by the president of germany for sort of hitler-like thoughts yeah the chief of the german medical association has asked the the nobel prize winners of throwing you out of this community
• 18:30 - 19:00 of their community because you also hitler like because i believe that you know that a woman should have the right to terminate a pregnancy if the child is going to be genetically unhealthy and you know that's what i said in very unambiguous terms that a woman should have the right i didn't say a woman should be forced to or not for so i just said a woman should have the right to try and have a healthy child and if she has a genetic test says that that child
• 19:00 - 19:30 is not going to be healthy and i think they got particularly upset over what over down syndrome which is so accepted by at least the vast majority of people in the united states you said that the child should should be successful and i think that they just flipped out over that well i think everyone has aspirations for their children that it's not nice when you have a child for which you can't have aspiration that's what i said women cry when they can't have
• 19:30 - 20:00 aspirations for their children it's awful we have to not defy common sense uh just because someone can say well hitler also had this idea so i think we're paying hitler's got us twice we're hostage to what hitler did and that things which we might say are sensible
• 20:00 - 20:30 we can't do because people say well hitler would have done exactly the same thing and that worries me watson has been attacked because he supports a new eugenics by the 1970s scientists were beginning to identify mistakes in the genetic code since then pregnant women have been offered tests to see if their unborn child has a genetic defect like cystic fibrosis or down syndrome
• 20:30 - 21:00 if they do they can choose to have an abortion and that's where we are today and this is where watson's eugenics begins he says it differs from the eugenics of the past eugenics is sort of self-directing your evolution and the message i have is that individuals should direct the evolution of their descendants don't let a state
• 21:00 - 21:30 do it i think it'd be irresponsible not to direct your evolution if you could in the sense that you could have a healthy child versus an unhealthy child i think it's irresponsible not to try and direct the evolution to produce a human being [Music] who will be an asset to the world
• 21:30 - 22:00 [Music] but in watson's eyes who is an asset to the world and who isn't [Music] yesterday mr and mrs harrington have three sons their youngest is named matthew and he has down's syndrome what's that one okay
• 22:00 - 22:30 what your echo echo all of my pregnancies we never had any genetic testing done with any of the boys uh i didn't even occur to me there was a reason to do it we just figured we were ready to have a family and we would have a family sure um first son was born at the birth center peter was born at a hospital because i
• 22:30 - 23:00 was overdue matthew was born at the birth center and we didn't know anything until he was born uh we found out right away that he had a heart condition and i noticed some different things about matthew i noticed i kept commenting on his eyes and i kept kind of feeling the back of his neck so i think somewhere down inside i knew there was something although we hadn't been told yet and it wasn't until the next day when we went to the pediatrician that she told us that he had down syndrome
• 23:00 - 23:30 if you were pregnant again would you test yourself no i don't think i would i think that there are two there would only be two reasons to do it and one is to prepare yourselves and inform yourselves of whatever might be helpful if you have a child with a disability and the other reason would be to decide not to follow through with the pregnancy and for us we were having a baby and that
• 23:30 - 24:00 was all it was about but the harringtons are concerned that people like matthew are becoming rarer and rarer hundreds of thousands of women worldwide take the test for down's syndrome the vast majority who test positive have abortions for watson this is the only way we have to eliminate the disease for the harringtons it's the elimination from society of people like matthew so they ask that people think twice before making these decisions
• 24:00 - 24:30 on sunday he and i go to the beach and we've been doing this for four or five years he and i go out into the water if it's a calm day i hold his hand if it's it's a slightly wavy day i hold him and and you know heals real tight we jump over the waves and and and then he goes in and sits on the shore and i ride a few waves and he likes to grade me uh but the two weeks ago three weeks ago on our last trip out
• 24:30 - 25:00 this fall we went into the water it was a pretty calm day we were about up to our chest and my chest i was holding him and all of a sudden he asked to be let go and i let him go he's become quite comfortable in the water and he rode this modest wave and probably went seven feet and you know he turned over and then popped up startled it first and then he realized that he had ridden the wave in by himself and the look on his face and look on my
• 25:00 - 25:30 face and he just opened his arms and it was it was one of those moments of just such pure joy that he and i had anticipated this for four years now he realized he had achieved this and i realized i had achieved it and i didn't think is he doing this before other kids do it his age it was just it was just the accomplishment that we shared together that i think is just it's something that i have with him that um you know i wish
• 25:30 - 26:00 more people that were considering life choices could could feel that uh could see that could could realize that yes the hurdles there's a longer approach and you approach it together he clears them by himself but but there is there's just a magic in in watching him do it that that as your other kids zoom through their hurdles uh you might not appreciate in all the same ways
• 26:00 - 26:30 we have a son with severe disabilities he's very very intelligent but he can't take care of himself and so he was didn't speak till he was four very late which you know we thought didn't mean anything but it did mean something and doesn't like to
• 26:30 - 27:00 shake hands or be hugged we have a bit of the opposite in our house yeah and it's a uh [Music] that must have been very difficult yeah it is and uh but if he can uh get by the that first initial barrier then he can be talking quite charming and but
• 27:00 - 27:30 his sort of natural impulses to pull away from people uh [Music] but you know it uh at times i think you know we're almost broken this is something watson rarely talks about publicly his son has a form of mental illness which is likely to have a genetic basis
• 27:30 - 28:00 when it comes to faults in dna almost everyone on earth is touched in some way while down's syndrome affects one in a thousand families mental illness affects one in four this is pilgrim state hospital in the 1930s it was the largest mental
• 28:00 - 28:30 hospital in the world there was this term snake pit you came here and you never left i think that was the awful thing not far from cold spring harbor it's the kind of place that motivated charles davenport's eugenics i find this very creepy i just would like these buildings to be torn
• 28:30 - 29:00 down because of all the all the sorrow and agony but although today there are treatments for mental illness there aren't any cures and pilgrim state hospital still houses hundreds of patients now this is the hospital building they come when they're just admitted
• 29:00 - 29:30 because you know just the the horror when you know parents come here and just have to bring their children here over there we still don't know what's wrong with
• 29:30 - 30:00 the people out there you can say when you know cystic fibrosis should know that you know there's a gene missing but with mental disease we don't have we haven't found one gene yet where we can really say what's wrong and it was this desire to find the genes that cause mental illness that took jim watson all the way to the united states congress
• 30:00 - 30:30 to ask for the three billion dollars necessary to map the human genome and now it's done this work enables scientists to read through the entire genetic code that makes a person now they can search for any human gene they're moving beyond simple genetic mistakes that cause down's syndrome and cystic fibrosis to more complex traits they will pinpoint the genes responsible for everything in our nature
• 30:30 - 31:00 whether we're likely to be gay or straight fat or thin suffer from depression or have a high iq and recently the first gene involved in mental illness has been found but this opens up another set of moral dilemmas should prospective parents be given this kind of information about their unborn child and where do you draw the line
• 31:00 - 31:30 consider manic depression watson suggested we visit k jamison we asked her to draw her family tree the cross hatches represent manic depression the stars suicide attempts my brother who's very normal myself who is not suicide attempt my sister
• 31:30 - 32:00 my father my father's mother her brother who was in an asylum most of his adult life see many of my cousins affected by this and my cousin's children continue to have problems i have the same illness my sister has the same illness so if you just look at that side of the family tree it's just
• 32:00 - 32:30 saturated eugenicists like charles davenport were right mental illness often does run in families listening to k one might wonder how far society has come since the days of people like davenport i went in to see a doctor and the doctor took a family history and knew i had manic depression and told me that i should never have
• 32:30 - 33:00 children because i had manic depressive illness and it was one of the more upsetting things i had been through in terms of just an experience with another person i couldn't believe first of all i couldn't believe the uh cruelty because it was said with such a level of certainty there was not any question of of being wrong i mean he absolutely knew that what he was saying was correct from his point of view that i had a very bad psychiatric illness
• 33:00 - 33:30 and i should not let loose into the world any more people that had those genes i didn't i wasn't asking his permission to have children i it didn't strike me that it was any of his business and i told him to go to hell i also told him that i was the director of the mood source clinic at ucla and i was completely aware that it was a genetic illness kay jamison isn't just a patient with manic depression she's also arguably the world expert on the subject
• 33:30 - 34:00 she's a psychologist and has written the definitive textbook on manic depression as well as a best-selling autobiography about her experience of the illness she knows when people salt your jeans [Music] it's it's just like saying you you ought not to have been born one of her recent books examines the link between manic depression and creativity when you're talking about genius i think you're talking about people who are by definition it's a very unusual set of
• 34:00 - 34:30 circumstances that leads to that kind of mind and ability so does watson's way take into account the positive sides of something like manic depression i think it's something that's really it's a hard argument if you wanted to say well what percentage of human creativity is associated with manic representative illness no idea
• 34:30 - 35:00 you know i think there'd be a lot of creativity without it if you look at the scientific literature there are more than 20 studies showing a very much elevated rate of depression and manic depression in people who are highly creative what k knows is that all these people were manic depressives so there's a risk that watson's science could deprive the world of these extraordinary people watson argues that this doesn't make up for the misery that goes with it this is how to say
• 35:00 - 35:30 what's more important what's good for the country or what is good for the individual and uh my way was always asking what's good for the individual i mean you sometimes say well our society would be greatly impoverished if there were no homosexuals but would you make someone be born homosexual because they're good for society knowing
• 35:30 - 36:00 the difficulties it's likely to impose in their lives uh i certainly wouldn't use that argument yeah i would go back to it i don't see how you could decide the answer and best to let parents decide i think most families that have manic-depressive disease we decided to have children without it
• 36:00 - 36:30 so that's about all you know it's a terrible curse i think that parents will be diverse in what they choose i think if i thought every parent would come down with a decision not to have any manic depressive illness floating around in the genes i would find that disturbing because i do think the diversity is important
• 36:30 - 37:00 for watson whether manic depressives become an endangered species will depend on the parents of the future and he asks would you want a child who could be highly creative but might be suicidal or would you just want to ensure your child was healthy there is another more radical way that dna science could deal with watson's unfit instead of aborting them people could be genetically engineered
• 37:00 - 37:30 since the human genome project dna science has gathered pace and now if you have the money you can get a printout of your own genetic code these are some of the g's a's t's and c's that make a jim watson now imagine you could change these letters around maybe people could even make themselves more intelligent or better looking
• 37:30 - 38:00 but should science be used in this way this is what the scientists call the question of enhancement oh i think people who say we should try and enhance people in the future i haven't thought it through uh we're always trying to enhance things and suddenly to say oh you can't enhance your genes well that sort of
• 38:00 - 38:30 says something you know mystical about it uh you know as if you don't oh it's a holy grail all right you know it's some out of king arthur's court you're not gonna mess with it that might sound like science fiction but not if you meet one of jim's former students the next generation of dna scientist mario capecchi
• 38:30 - 39:00 [Music] jim was a very important influence on my life literally we live in the future and we imagine things and we dream about things he has his own billion dollar enterprise the genetic enhancement of mice and the reason he does that is to develop the technology for use in people the process begins with this machine the bottles at the bottom are full of
• 39:00 - 39:30 the ingredients of the genetic code because this machine can make dna this is an automatic dna synthesizer and what you can see here are the nucleotides a g c and t and so what this machine can do we can program it to put in as we're synthesizing the dna we can put specifically put in a at this position then a c at the next position and a t and so on and then thereby re-synthesize a part of a gene and so in essence we have the capability of
• 39:30 - 40:00 changing the genome in any way we see fit he then has another machine that incorporates the new piece of dna into the mouse cell we put an enormous voltage jump on this and in the process what happens is that the little holes are opened up in the cells and the dna slips into the cells and then goes into the nucleus and then participates in making the dna of the mouse in this way he can change the mouse embryo when it's just a small cluster of
• 40:00 - 40:30 cells and then observes how the new dna affects the way the animal forms will it affect the growth of cells will it affect making particular bones or will it affect making the muscle or the tendons in that uh in that limb or will it affect all of those this is one of the best ways to study what specific genes actually do he sees how the new dna affects the embryo how it changes the adult mouse even how it alters the mouse's offspring
• 40:30 - 41:00 as the change is passed through generations this mouse has had a gene switched off so it cannot move its face muscles it cannot blink now that might sound cruel but mario kopechi does this because there are children who are born without the ability to move their face muscles and his research is designed to look for a cure the amount of knowledge that we get by studying the function of a gene in a living organism is enormous i mean most of our previous knowledge we had we
• 41:00 - 41:30 were off completely as to what a gene is doing in a living organism and the only way to find out is actually to alter it and see what happens genetically mice and humans are almost identical that is the 99.9 percent of all the genes in a mouse and a human are going to be the same so whatever actually we learn in the mouse is going to be directly applicable to humans the technology that he's using to do this could have another application just as dolly the sheep has opened the
• 41:30 - 42:00 door to human cloning mario's mouse shows the way towards human enhancement but if the technology were to be used in this way would science have crossed the threshold of what's acceptable most agree that mario's work should be used to cure illness but many question trying to use it to make us more intelligent however watson doesn't see a clear distinction between the two by staying healthy your brain is also
• 42:00 - 42:30 healthy and if you really are stupid i would call that a disease stupidity is you know a disease of the brain the lower 10 percent who really have difficulty you know even an elementary school what's the cause of it uh a lot of people would like to say what was the you know poverty and things like that but it probably isn't and uh so i'd like to get rid of you know it
• 42:30 - 43:00 helps that lower 10 percent does watson draw the line anywhere how about more cosmetic changes making people better looking you know everyone's saying it would be terrible we made all girls pretty okay well i think it'd be great and it's those kind of comments that make some people think that watson's judgment has gone off the rails they argue it would be crazy to make such changes to our dna lumbering generations to come with our current
• 43:00 - 43:30 cosmetic preferences but before discounting his views one should hear what else capeche is planning he's turned his attention to chromosomes our dna is wrapped up into 23 different sets which carry our genetic traits from one generation to the next capeche doesn't want to tamper with any of these he's thinking about making an extra artificial chromosome it would carry a bundle of genetic improvements which he could switch on
• 43:30 - 44:00 and off just like he does in mice the artificial chromosome could even be upgraded like computer software before being passed on to the next generation any alteration comes with a kind of money back guarantee it does in the sense that you're not stuck with it i mean you're not changing the genome forever you can change it and if you're pleased with the results you can keep it if you don't like it then you get rid of it and go back to the previous situation
• 44:00 - 44:30 and this is very important because what we may think is brilliant today 20 years from now may seem pretty stupid and whatever they think about in 20 years from now will be stupid 20 years later hence so it's very important to make the system reversible and i think that's technically possible what's wrong with that you say we'll give them an unfair advantage but some people now are born with you know much better abilities than others and we don't say they shouldn't be born
• 44:30 - 45:00 it's graduation day at oxford university a university famous throughout the world for academic excellence but it's a place where only the most intelligent are allowed in for watson these kids were just lucky in the genetic lottery but why can't those with bad genetic luck be allowed to improve themselves or their children it seems fair that some people
• 45:00 - 45:30 don't have the same opportunity watson thinks it's inevitable that this inequality will be overturned once you have a way which will improve our children no one could stop it if you had the technology it would be stupid not to use it because someone else will [Applause] those parents who enhance their children then their children are going to be the ones that dominate the world
• 45:30 - 46:00 good to see you ma'am [Music] a lot of people dislike genetics because we're talking about inequality and
• 46:00 - 46:30 people say who have cystic fibrosis they don't want to be declared unequal and so they can say we're different but basically it doesn't matter deep down when you get close it does matter cystic fibrosis is just one of 5 000 genetic disorders that have so far been
• 46:30 - 47:00 identified 1 in 25 people carry the gene and therefore have a chance that their children could suffer from it the cause of genetic disease is one of the many things that 50 years ago watson helped explain when he made his big discovery when he saw the beautiful spiraling double helix shape of dna he saw how dna
• 47:00 - 47:30 copied itself how genetic instructions could be passed on through generations but he also saw that his copying process could make mistakes these mistakes could occasionally be beneficial and that would allow organisms to improve and evolve but the majority of the copying mistakes were detrimental the cause of genetic disease that's the theory but today watson is more concerned with the practical
• 47:30 - 48:00 the final place watson wanted to take us on his tour of the future looked like just another lab in these two sections of the lab it's mainly movement disorders and neurodegeneration that's where um a lot of patients in clinics uh above the age of 50 start developing tremors so we have a clinical senior scientist this is k davis and this is her lab in oxford a place where they look for cures for a variety of different genetic diseases designer a treatment she has a team of scientists and all the latest equipment so all of this is genetic analysis it's
• 48:00 - 48:30 an expensive operation and it's supported by the fundraising of jim watson but it would also fund things like the pcr machines which amplified the dna several millions of times so we can take a small sample and then analyze it because we can we can copy it lots of times and get enough of it to look at the details for watson labs like these are the culmination of a lifetime's work what we're talking about is what's real diseases really serious diseases that we
• 48:30 - 49:00 have an opportunity to do something about serious diseases no child should be born with there's no purpose there you know it's all darwinian it's been you know selection of those of the fit and then constant generation of new variability that's it there's always new variability there has been no new variability there'd be no evolution but the price of this variability is some people are born with variability
• 49:00 - 49:30 which is no good you know what i call genetic injustice and what the world of human genetics is trying to do is to reduce the level of injustice that's not how to create the perfect human or anything like that it just sees this form of it's like any form of injustice is corrupting if you accept it so we can't accept it
• 49:30 - 50:00 and that's ultimately why watson wants to play god but while he argues for forging ahead even some of his allies have reservations about controlling our evolution the fact of the matter is this is all unchartered territory and we don't know what decisions people are going to make and it's scary it is it is frightening and it's and it's uh and it's exciting both if you have a child that is mentally it's easy to say you know why
• 50:00 - 50:30 shouldn't i do everything i can to make sure that that child is now at least in the middle of the curve okay that's a fairly simple kind of judgment to make but i think on the other hand an important aspect of humans is that we're very different and we also all have different types of intelligences and to try to push one type of intelligence versus another i think it becomes possibly a dangerous thing [Music]
• 50:30 - 51:00 i love the fact that we are as diverse a species as we are i love the fact that we have such a diversity of temperaments and such a diversity of intellectual styles and ways of seeing the world and ways of going through the world and i don't want to start narrowing that range i don't want to give people a sense that they have to start narrowing and narrowing and narrowing and it was producing kind of a little vanilla
• 51:00 - 51:30 children as a kind of a ghastly thought i've lived all my life with people saying don't do something so i'm used to these people most people are you know one degree or another are afraid of change they don't
• 51:30 - 52:00 know how to they'll fit in with change i think you often have to move in directions where if there was a majority of vote they'd be against it because they don't really know what you're trying to do and there isn't time to convince them have you never worried about offending someone i mean uh yeah i think just say the truth
• 52:00 - 52:30 jim watson has always been controversial it's probably in his dna but perhaps his most powerful defense of his science rests on the potential good it could do scientists at doctors are the people who are going to do the miracles of the future let the lame walk
• 52:30 - 53:00 stop the cancers uh restore our sight and it's all sort of within our vision and uh so i don't worry that you know some people say we're playing god but that's an awfully good thing to do because people are looking for gods to do good things in our last interview with watson we asked him how he would like to be
• 53:00 - 53:30 remembered probably you know that i care for society and you're probably less selfish than i might have been