A New York laboratory severed all ties with James Watson, the discoverer of DNA, who claimed a link between race and intelligence.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) says they want deprive to lead the lab's 90-year-old Watson for years.
Marilyn Simons, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Laboratory Trust, said in a statement that the laboratory "unequivocally rejects Dr. James D Watson's unproven and reckless personal views on race and genetics."
Dr Watson's views are reprehensible and do not represent the views of the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, its trustees, faculty members or students without scientific support. The laboratory condemned the abuse of science to justify prejudice. "
James Watson, together with Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin, discovered the double helix structure of DNA in 1953.
In 2007, he told the Sunday Times that he was "pessimistic about the prospects for Africa" because "all our social policies are based on their intelligence and our equivalent assumptions, but all experiments show that this is not the case." After the comments, the lab stopped making him head of the lab.
He also said that although he wanted all races to be equal, "those who deal with black employees find this not the case."
Watson apologized for the comments, but recently in a documentary he said he had no change.
"I also hope that my views will change and that new knowledge will tell us that acquired education is more important than natural genes. But I don't see such new knowledge. There are differences in average scores between black and white IQ tests. I would like to say that the difference comes from genes. " Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories says Dr. deprive Watson includes Honorary Professor, Oliver R Grace, Honorary Laboratory Director, and Honorary Trustee.
The lab said his recent comments "amount to overturning the written apology and retraction made in 2007," and that they thanked him for his scientific contributions and the history of leading the lab, but could no longer have anything to do with him.
"what he made in the documentary is completely incompatible with our mission, values and policies, and therefore severed everything from him."
The Times reported that Watson's family said he could not respond because he had been under medical care since the October crash.