Leading Scientist James Watson Speaks on Cancer in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute

Posted on: 03 May 2013

Nobel laureate and the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA Professor James Watson  spoke and participated in a discussion on cancer at a special symposium in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute  last  week  (April 30th). Watson has recently launched a scathing critique on antioxidant supplements, claiming they may have caused more cancers than they have prevented. The subject for discussion at the TBSI proved to be a lively and controversial debate.

Professor Watson points out that the vast majority of all agents used to directly kill cancer cells, including radiation and chemotherapeutic agents, work by generating reactive oxygen species (ROS).  The ROS cause cancer cells to kill themselves.  ROS, however, are also able to irreversibly damage key proteins and nucleic acid molecules (such as DNA and RNA) in normal cells, so when they are not needed to curb cancer cells, ROS are constantly being neutralised by antioxidative proteins. In order to aid this neutralisation, we are often urged to eat foods rich in antioxidants, such as blueberries or carrots. Professor Watson claims that in late-stage cancer, as ROS are needed for cancer cell killing, suppressing them may promote the progression of threatening cells and hence cancer.  Watson also discusses evidence that cancer cells that are hard to kill have high levels of ROS-destroying antioxidants. His views were published on January 8, 2012, in ‘Open Biology’.

Watson has stated: “For as long as I have been focused on  understanding and curing cancer, well-intentioned individuals have been consuming antioxidative nutritional supplements as cancer preventatives if not actual therapies,” concluded Professor Watson. “In light of the recent data strongly hinting that much of late-stage cancer’s untreatability may arise from its possession of too many antioxidants, the time has come to seriously ask whether antioxidant use much more likely causes, than prevents, cancer; ‘these foods had best be eaten because they taste good, not because their consumption will lead to less cancer’.”

Recent studies have shown that antioxidant supplements have negligible positive effect on healthy people, at least in terms of important things such as preventing cancer or premature death. Some supplements–notably vitamins A, E, and beta-carotene-even seem to slightly raise the risk of disease and early death.

Watson  discussed his views with researchers working on cancer in TBSI.