Word: helixes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...they also might have been wrong, as they had been a year and a half earlier, when the two rookies had made some dumb mistakes. Even Linus Pauling, the world's greatest chemist, had blown his own "solution" to DNA a couple of months before. So while their double-helix model seemed to make biochemical sense and agreed with what was already known, a wiser man might have toned down his rhetoric...
...fact that double helix and Watson and Crick are familiar to just about every schoolchild, though, makes it clear that DNA was every bit as important as Crick thought. Not only did it explain heredity, but it would also lead to such practical applications as DNA forensics in law enforcement, testing for genetic diseases and the development of an entire biotechnology industry. With the recent completion of the Human Genome Project, it could radically change the way medicine is practiced over the next few decades. Crick's bold assertion was stunningly accurate. --By Michael Lemonick
...TIME president Eileen Naughton aptly predicted, these emotional topics produced fireworks. At one point, the Nobel laureate James Watson, whose discovery 50 years ago with Francis Crick of DNA?s double helix was the inspiration for the three-day talkfest, showed that even at age 74, he could be as feisty as ever. When ethicist Daniel Callahan insisted that bioscientists didn?t absolutely need embryonic stem cells in their quest to cure certain intractable ailments, Watson roared from his seat: ?That?s crap.? Stunned into momentary silence, Callahan eventually replied that maybe scientists could use them under certain circumstances...
...even as the prophets of this bold new world were making their far-out forecasts, other participants in a conference that marked the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the double helix sounded much more skeptical notes. They warned that as futurist Arthur Clarke once remarked, short-term predictions about technological advances often tend to lag far behind predicted timetables. As an example, composer and visual artist Jaron Lanier cited problems that still plague even our simplest computer programs. "Software is still software," he said, openly questioning its ability to handle increased complexity that all the projected advances would require...
...minded scientists, government officials and entrepreneurs, gathering near his beloved Cannery Row, to think about the consequences of a biological revolution. It was, of course, a revolution even he could not have anticipated. And not just because he died five years before Watson and Crick discovered DNA?s double helix (when his car was hit by a produce-laden freight train). Doc was an old-fashioned sort of biologist who combed tide pools for the invertebrates he loved - mollusks, anemones, starfish - and studied their gross features and quirky behavior (and supported himself by supplying biological specimens and slides to schools...