As one of the discoverers of the DNA double helix, Dr James Watson is one of the most eminent scientists of the age, writes Breda O'Brien.
He was in Dublin this week at a 50th anniversary celebration of that discovery, and caused some controversy by his assertion that women who are carrying embryos with "deleterious genes" should have the right to abort those embryos. He says that no-one but the mothers should have the right to make that decision, even if he did advocate listening "to the father if he is about".
Naturally enough, Dr Watson's assertion caused some controversy, which drew attention away from other contentious opinions which he also holds. For example, he sees no problems with altering the genes of human beings in order to make them more intelligent, and to do so in a way which means that the improved capacities can be passed on to the next generation.
He believes it is a way to redress "genetic injustice". Judging by a long extract from one of his books which was published in this newspaper during the week, Dr Watson appears to be an optimistic man, who believes that St Paul in his famous passage on love captured the essence of humanity. However, while St Paul would claim that the human ability to love mirrors the love of the one who created us, Dr Watson finds the root of love in our DNA, and grows rather vexed at those who would find other sources for it.
When it comes to science, one can only bow the head before one of the discoverers of the DNA double helix. When it comes to theories of how and why human beings came into existence, or how they should conduct their lives, or which members of the human species we should allow to be born or not, does Dr Watson have any greater right to be heard than any other person?
Is the scientific method vital but limited, in that it cannot be expected to provide answers regarding the meaning of life, or how we should live it? Mind you, Dr Watson's musings are less exotic than those of his fellow discoverer of the double helix, Nobel laureate Francis Crick, who once famously proposed that life might have arisen from space aliens who seeded the planet with life.
Dr Watson makes a number of interesting claims. For example, he declares that as a scientist he "depends only on observation and experimentation", and feels no need for recourse to religious revelation. He goes on to say: "Those of us who feel no need for a moral code written in an ancient tome, have, in my opinion, recourse to an innate moral intuition long ago shaped by natural selection promoting social cohesion in groups of our ancestors." Later he says that he is sure that the capacity to love is inscribed in our DNA. These are fascinating assertions, but they have absolutely no scientific basis and cannot be proven empirically. They are part of Dr Watson's belief system, which includes an act of faith in the basic decency of the human being. It is a belief system which he believes to be superior to religious belief systems, but whether it is or not, cannot be empirically proven either.
Let's examine Dr Watson's assertion that we are the possessors of an innate moral intuition, and for a moment accept that this came about through a process of evolution. Given that differing moral intuitions have led human beings to wage war and to commit murder, how does the possession of these intuitions confer the kind of evolutionary benefit which Dr Watson suggests?
If the most ruthless survive such battles, how does that fit with Dr Watson's assertion that we are inescapably social, and genetically programmed to love? How would Dr Watson explain the fact that other atheistic scientists come to different conclusions about the human person? Take that other well-known disciple of Darwin, Richard Dawkins. He says that "like successful Chicago gangsters our genes have survived, in some cases millions of years, in a highly competitive world, a predominant quality to be expected in them is ruthless selfishness". Not much capacity to love inscribed in our DNA allowed for there.
The reality is that when both Dr Watson and Dr Dawkins talk about human beings, they are working out of belief systems indelibly printed with their own biases, in this case, the bias that the universe is without purpose other than that of the blind forces of evolution. One of them takes a more kindly view of humanity than the other, but neither can prove empirically that they are right. The biases of religious people are clear to them, while they remain blind to their own.
Atheists who are in favour of evolution sometimes act as if there were only two possibilities. The first is that evolution as a theory is correct in every way and disproves the existence of a Creator. The second is that we must believe in creation literally as it is described in the Bible, that it took place in seven days, some 4004 years before the birth of Christ. For example, Dr Watson says that "there are those who will continue to believe that humans are creations of God, whose will we must serve, while others will continue to embrace the empirical evidence indicating that humans are the products of many millions of generations of evolutionary change". He fails to acknowledge that there are many scientists who believe in God, but who are not creationists. These scientists are convinced by many of the arguments put forward by Darwin but remain sceptical that they tell the full story.
By all means, let us be grateful to those who have advanced the sum of human knowledge, even if what we know about the human genome leads to thousands of further unanswered questions. But let us not make the mistake of thinking that because this information is discovered by scientists, that they have any intrinsic superiority when it comes to suggesting what should be done with this knowledge.
bobrien@irish-times.ie