No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?
Polls consistently show that the majority of Americans favour research using embryonic stem cells and yet politicians continue to pander to the outspoken religious minority that is hampering efforts to develop this potentially valuable technology.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the conflict between public opinion favoring embryonic stem cell research and the influence of a vocal religious minority against it.
James D. Watson's quote addresses the disparity between the majority of Americans who support embryonic stem cell research and the politicians who cater to a small but vocal group of religious individuals opposing this scientific advancement. This situation can hinder the progression of potentially groundbreaking medical technologies that could improve lives and drive scientific innovation.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a debate on healthcare policy, this quote can illustrate the tension between scientific progress and political decision-making.
More from James D. Watson
All quotes →I think the reason people are dealing with science less well now than 50 years ago is that it has become so complicated.
DNA was my only gold rush. I regarded DNA as worth a gold rush.
Science has always been my preoccupation and when you think a breakthrough is possible, it is terribly exciting.
If you go into science, I think you better go in with a dream that maybe you, too, will get a Nobel Prize. It's not that I went in and I thought I was very bright and I was going to get one, but I'll confess, you know, I knew what it was.
Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness.
Similar quotes
But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
The distribution of species on islands and continents throughout the world is exactly what you'd expect if evolution was a fact. The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction.
When we have any function, whether it's language or vision or cognitive functions like memory, we aren't dealing with a straight line to the brain that says 'This is what I do.' The brain builds a network of connections, a network of neurons that have a particular role in that function.
This field is not necessarily glamorous, nor does it often produce immediate results, but it seeks to increase our basic understanding of living processes.
You can’t say A is made of B or vice versa. All mass is interaction.