Timing is Everything...

…even more so in blogging than in comedy, not that the two don’t overlap somewhat. (So says the guy who hasn't posted an entry in almost three months... that's irony, folks.)

The Nobel-winning co-discoverer of DNA Dr. James Watson drew fire about six weeks ago for his controversial claims that people of African descent have lower intelligence. After that story had hit the papers, I began a blog entry about Watson, wanting to explore how society responds when our scientific celebrities are caught with their foot in their mouth.

When it became clear that my post would be late enough not to be a very fresh perspective, I gave up on it and paid attention to my mounting load of homework instead. This past weekend, however, I was in Boston at the annual conference of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R), the organization of Institutional Review Boards, who provide protective oversight to human subjects research. I’ve been serving on a Madison hospital’s IRB for the past year, and this was my first exposure to the international network joining all of these local IRBs.

I was struck during one keynote lecture, though, that Watson’s remarks may actually be worth another look, now that we’ve had some time to absorb the controversy. I was interested in the conference lecturer’s use of another quote by Watson: “We used to think that our fate was in our stars. Now we know, in large measure, our fate is in our genes.” After reading this quote, the speaker laughed at how not only was the content of the quote discredited, but implied also that Watson had discredited himself even as a potential source of scientific wisdom. Not only had his remarks on race revealed him to a fool, but they also apparently disqualified him to speak even on the subject of his scientific expertise.

The last morning’s keynote speaker, another excellent lecturer, explored the history of racial and ethnic issues in diseases like Tay-Sachs disease and sickle-cell anemia. Because Tay-Sachs disease, for example, was so strongly identified with Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, Jewish communities found ways to engineer the matchmaking process to reduce the number of babies born with this usually-fatal condition. In more liberal Jewish families, abortion was considered an option when it was possible, but Orthodox Jews instead took part in a fascinating project with the organization Dor Yeshorim to conduct blood tests on Jewish teens and prevent genetic carriers from marrying one another. The success of this project, however, led it into some controversial waters of its own –- it was later suggested that Jewish youth should also be tested for common (but less fatal) heritable diseases like Gaucher’s disease and cystic fibrosis. Despite the success of Dor Yeshorim’s work, it suddenly became clearer to the general public how risky this social engineering could be.

I recall this keynote lecture because the speaker quoted another brilliant Nobel laureate, Dr. Linus Pauling. Back in 1968, Pauling suggested another approach to reduce the incidence of disease: carriers of the sickle-cell mutation should be tattooed on their foreheads with some symbol of their genetic status to prevent them from falling in love with one another.

Well, not surprisingly, I was disappointed to read such a draconian suggestion from a respected scientist and humanitarian. It has started me thinking once again of this category of scientific celebrity: why is it that we come to see respected scientists as infallible sources, and why is it that we also give them a blank check to broadcast opinions on subjects unrelated to their field of study?