James Watson, whose 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA with Francis Crick launched the revolution in molecular biology, says recent heart surgery has wreaked havoc on his long-term memory (though not his tennis serve: the 88-year-old can still reach 100 miles per hour). At a celebration of his friend Arthur Pardee’s 95th birthday last weekend at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Mass., however, Watson showed no signs of cognitive slowdown, much less of forgetting the world-changing events of 63 years ago. He bemoaned the recent cancer moonshot saying “The depressing thing about the cancer moonshot is that it’s the same old people getting together, forming committees, and the same old ideas.
https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/20/james-watson-cancer/
