Reading the Book of Jim

It would be a mistake to think that reaching the age of 79 has mellowed James Watson. Fifty-four years after he discovered, with Francis Crick, the structure of DNA, and 45 years after sharing the Nobel Prize for it, he delights in provocation just as much as when he made his reputation as the bad boy of molecular biology, bulldozing colleagues and competitors (and using crucial data generated by one, Rosalind Franklin) in his headlong race to the double helix. In the years since, Watson built Cold Spring Harbor

Laboratory in New York into a biology powerhouse, briefly led the Human Genome Project—and endorsed designer babies, genetic engineering to make "all girls pretty" and curing "stupidity" through genetics. Which makes his words this rainy May morning at the lab all the more surprising.

Two years ago Watson agreed to become the first person to have his genome sequenced and made public. A biotech company, 454 Life Sciences, has now determined, from a blood sample, every one of the 6 billion chemical "letters" (designated A, T, C and G) that make up the DNA in Watson's cells. He will see his genetic blueprint on May 30. The next day it will be posted in a National Institutes of Health database for all the world to look at and, in the case of experts, deduce whether his genes have spellings (ATTCGT ... ) associated with diseases, intelligence, neuroticism, risk-taking, belief in God, shyness and all the other traits that biologists have linked to genes. "I always wanted to be a hero," Watson says almost apologetically; he's doing this to encourage others to have their own genome sequenced. He thinks it will "make people healthier" by giving them information that could prevent disease. But he has another hope. If personal- genome sequencing becomes widespread, he says, "it will make people more compassionate.

"We'll understand why people can't do certain things," he continues. "Instead of asking a child to shape up, we'll stop having unrealistic expectations." If a child's genome shows that his awkwardness or inattention or limited intelligence has a genetic basis, "we'll want to help rather than be mad. If a child doesn't finish high school, we treat that as a failure, as his fault. But knowing someone's full genetic information will keep us from making him do things he'll fail at." For a clue to this softer side of Watson, one need look no farther than his office next door to the room where he is speaking. There, along with the Nobel citation and other honors, hangs a poster-size framed photo of his two sons when they were little. One suffers from a mental illness that causes symptoms of both autism and schizophrenia.

It remains to be seen whether society will look more kindly on people, like his son, who are different if those differences are traced to DNA. Homophobia didn't exactly vanish after sexual orientation was shown to have a genetic basis. And the notion that genes are destiny raises possibilities more disturbing than Watson's impish suggestion that we use genetic engineering to beautify the female half of the species. Most obviously, people may believe that what is written in their code of life determines not only their health but also their intelligence, character, talents and personality. "Will our genetic profiles make us self-limiting, and will we allow them to?" asks Elaine Ostrander of the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Ready or not, personal-genome sequencing is just around the corner. "Project Jim," as 454 calls it, took 67 days of sequencing time and cost $1 million. But with new technology "we are on our way to the $10,000 genome and soon the $1,000 genome," says Jonathan Rothberg, 454's founder and chairman. And unlike other medical tests, which must be done regularly to detect changes, your genome need be sequenced only once.