First he discovered the double helix, now he hopes to find a cure for cancer. In what has been billed as his “most important work since the double helix,” James Watson recently elaborated upon the dual role of reactive oxygen species (ROS) as both an elixer of life and a deadly force behind incurable mesenchymal cancers.
Although antioxidants have been popularly promoted as important health food choices, Dr. Watson writes that they can be quite harmful in late stage cancer, often causing rapid progression of the disease.
According to Watson, cancers that become resistant to chemotherapeutic treatment, simultaneously become resistant to ionizing radiotherapy due to the action of ROS to induce apoptosis. Therefore, the key to curing cancer will largely depend upon discovering new ways of reducing antioxidant levels.
Tags: cancer research, James Watson
Watson didn’t discover the double helix. He was only partly involved- Watson and Crick relied heavily on Rosalind Franklin’s X-Ray crystallography, which was the key piece of data revealing the actual structure. They stole her unpublished work for their ‘discovery’ and never gave her credit, which in my opinion, should merit stripping of the Nobel prize. He also believes and promotes the theory of racial basis for intellectual differences (http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/18/science.race/index.html), which has no scientific merit and consequently makes me skeptical of any scientific opinion he may share.
Today, when we are seeing a record number of manuscript retractions, we see that ethics truly do still matter in science. Scientists must be held to a high ethical standard so others can trust in published studies and use those discoveries to develop theories in new directions.
The last paragraph seems garbled; the resistance to radiotherapy is not “due to the action of ROS” but rather to their supppression, supposedly.
That’s James, not Jamews, of course; oops.
This is not very clearly written. Reactive oxygen species, such as superoxide, are not antioxidants. They are the targets against which antioxidants act.