Week8

Concluding Diane B. Paul's book it seems as if we have taken another form of eugenics into our hands that more directly affect us. With the questions of allowing a child to be born, but born defected, or to give up the fetus. This question maybe beyond the scope of this class, but with all the health care initiatives. If government is permitted to direct our health care would they be able to more directly influence child birth? If so, wouldn't this be eugenics in action?

http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110311/GJNEWS_01/703119927

Do plants have DNA like animals? If not what is the difference? Are there any organisms that do not have the double Helix? How do you think genetics would be different if Franklin did not die? How would genetics be different if she received the credit? Also, why was the shape of DNA so important? Were their other features of DNA that were being researched at the time?

The movie we watched clearly showed that most of the credit should have gone to Rosalind Franklin and Wilkins. Since the movie is based on Watson's book, was it written to express remorse? Did Watson realize what he did was wrong and try to give credit it where it was due by writing the book?

You mentioned at the end of class that Watson wrote the double helix and sued to try to have it not published. Why did he not want it published? and why did he write it in the first place then?

Not Question: I would just like to say that a good part of the reason the Watson and Crick are remembered so well is because they were better writers than they were scientists. Not to say that they were bad scientists, but that article for Nature was quite cleverly written, but not very scientific.

Question: Did Rosalind know about her nickname "Rosy", and if she did what where her thoughts about it?'

My question for this week is about the video we saw on monday. In the video, Rosalind Franklin found two different patterns for DNA. She spent the majority of her time endlessly working on the type A pattern while everyone else was more curious about the B pattern. What caused her to change her mind and start researching the B pattern instead?

I enjoyed the movie we watched in class Monday but it did bring about a question. Once Watson and Crick showed the world and Maurice Wilkins their model of DNA and offered Wilkins a cut of the credit he turned them down saying that it was all theirs and he will publish separately, yet he still ended up with the Nobel prize with them. How did Maurice Wilkins come back into the picture?

About the movie we watched on Monday, it almost seemed like Rosalind Franklin was two different people. when she was in Paris or with her Parisian friend Vitterio(?) she was at ease, enjoying life and fun. But when she was in the lab or dealing with any of the British scientist she was always on edge, fiercely focused and intense. Do you think this is just how the movie portrayed her or did she like to keep her private life and work separate.

In the movie and biography, we see that Rosalind Franklin is very defensive of her work and against the idea of collaborating for the purpose of "winning the race" to the discovery of DNA structure.

Was this mainly because she was a woman and did not have the same competitive and aggressive tendencies as men? Or was she just simply a more righteous scientist in wanting to be thorough with her work and fully understand why a solution is a solution, rather than jumping to guessed conclusions?

Today, as you know because you were present, we watched a movie in class. There were a whole lot of politics involved in the process of discovery. It seems that the "politics of the workplace" have been present in most of the topics covered so far. Is it possible to separate the game of what's yours and mine and of who discovered it first from the actual science? And more importantly, should it be separated? Do you think the discoveries like the structure of DNA would have been made as they were had everyone ignored the politics? Is the race a necessary evil?

http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna/narrative/page1.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/