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Discoverer of double helix structure of DNA was on LSD during the epiphany

Pander Bear

Pander Bear

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Jun 29, 2001
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I thought this was cool. I didn't even hear that Crick had died.

Link
Nobel Prize genius Crick was high on LSD
when he discovered the secret of life

Copyright 2004 Associated Newspapers Ltd. Mail on Sunday (London)

August 8, 2004

BY ALUN REES


FRANCIS CRICK, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced thedouble-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.

The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in
Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life.

Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not
the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.

Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another hallucinogen, mescaline, in the short stories The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws.

It was through his membership of Soma that Crick inadvertently became the inspiration for the biggest LSD manufacturing conspiracy-the world has ever seen the multimillion-pound drug factory in a remote
farmhouse in Wales that was smashed by the Operation Julie raids of the late Seventies.

Crick's involvement with the gang was fleeting but crucial. The revered scientist had been invited to the Cambridge home of freewheeling American writer David Solomon a friend of hippie LSD guru Timothy
Leary who had come to Britain in 1967 on a quest to discover a method for manufacturing pure THC, the active ingredient of cannabis.

It was Crick's presence in Solomon's social circle that attracted a brilliant young biochemist, Richard Kemp, who soon became a convert to the attractions of both cannabis and LSD. Kemp was recruited to the THC project in 1968, but soon afterwards devised the world's first foolproof method of producing cheap, pure LSD. Solomon and Kemp went into business, manufacturing acid in a succession of rented houses before setting up their laboratory in a cottage on a hillside near Tregaron, Carmarthenshire, in 1973. It is estimated that Kemp manufactured drugs worth Pounds 2.5 million an astonishing amount in the Seventies before police stormed the building in 1977 and seized enough pure LSD and its constituent chemicals to make two million LSD 'tabs'.

The arrest and conviction of Solomon, Kemp and a string of co-conspirators dominated the headlines for months. I was covering the case as a reporter at the time and it was then that I met Kemp's close friend, Garrod Harker, whose home had been raided by police but who had not been arrest ed. Harker told me that
Kemp and his girlfriend Christine Bott by then in jail were hippie idealists who were completely uninterested in the money they were making.

They gave away thousands to pet causes such as the Glastonbury pop festival and the drugs charity Release.

'They have a philosophy,' Harker told me at the time. 'They believe industrial society will collapse when the oil runs out and that the answer is to change people's mindsets using acid. They believe LSD can help people to see that a return to a natural society based on self-sufficiency is the only way to save themselves.

'Dick Kemp told me he met Francis Crick at Cambridge. Crick had told him that some Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool, to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas. Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD.

'It was clear that Dick Kemp was highly impressed and probably bowled over by what Crick had told him. He told me that if a man like Crick, who had gone to the heart of human existence, had used LSD, then it
was worth using. Crick was certainly Dick Kemp's inspiration.' Shortly afterwards I visited Crick at his home, Golden Helix, in Cambridge.

He listened with rapt, amused attention to what I told him about the role of LSD in his Nobel Prize-winning discovery. He gave no intimation of surprise. When I had finished, he said: 'Print a word of it and I'll sue.'
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I've heard about this. I seem to recall reading that Crick vehemently denied the influence of LSD on his work when asked about it in later life. This suggests that either it's not true, or that he wanted to take full credit for the discovery, without giving any of it to brother Cid.

I actually did a presentation in high school about famous artists and scientists who used psychedelic drugs. I tried to address the the question of whether the fact that they were high in any way made their discoveries less legitimately 'theirs'. I'd be interested to here peoples opinions on this.

Also, If I recall correctly, Kerry Mullis came up with the idea for the Polymerase chain reaction while on LSD. He eventually won the Nobel prize in chemistry for this.
 
so maybe its not a double helix, maybe he just hallucinated that 8o 8(




just kiddin
 
I read that Crick was the one who said that it was LSD that helped him to discover the double helix structure. It appears there is conflicting literature on this.
 
Its definitely a bullshit story. Mostly because Rosalind Franklin did the work and produced the photograph of DNA. Watson and Crick used her data without her permission and then "discovered" the structure.

I always find this myth funny because it shows people's ignorance to the history of science.

There is a good book on her called Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
 
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My understanding of her x-ray crystalography was that it gave a general idea of what DNA looked like (long, thin), but not that it was a double helix. The prevailing theory before watson and crick published was that it was a single helix with nucleic acids radiating outwards from a single core of sugars.

and also, franklin didn't get any credit (in part) because she was universally regarded as an ornery, antisocial cunt. Too bad that's the way things work everywhere, even in pure sciences, but thats life.
 
atlas said:
My understanding of her x-ray crystalography was that it gave a general idea of what DNA looked like (long, thin), but not that it was a double helix. The prevailing theory before watson and crick published was that it was a single helix with nucleic acids radiating outwards from a single core of sugars.

and also, franklin didn't get any credit (in part) because she was universally regarded as an ornery, antisocial cunt. Too bad that's the way things work everywhere, even in pure sciences, but thats life.
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In actuality a nobel prize couldn't be awarded posthumously if she had been alive in 1962 then she would have stood alongside Watson Crick and Wilson at the Nobel prize ceremony.

her xray images were so so much better than any other at the time and were good enough to give the interatomic distances, it was then only a matter of time before someone figured out the structure,
 
most of our aging software/computer programs experimented with psychedelics, as Ram Dass has said, psychedelics are in a great deal responsible for personal computers and the internet. I think it's in some of James Fadimans work that he comments of the influentual people ho took part in his creativity tests done under the influence of low dose LSD.
 
Youkai said:
most of our aging software/computer programs experimented with psychedelics, as Ram Dass has said, psychedelics are in a great deal responsible for personal computers and the internet. I think it's in some of James Fadimans work that he comments of the influentual people ho took part in his creativity tests done under the influence of low dose LSD.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said



good read, if you haven't already read it
 
The root of this myth comes from the guy who discovered DNA polymerase synthesis. His inspiration to go into Genetics and Proteomics came from using LSD when he was 15. I will find his name.

Peace,
PL
 
Hewhomustnotbenamed said:
Also, If I recall correctly, Kerry Mullis came up with the idea for the Polymerase chain reaction while on LSD. He eventually won the Nobel prize in chemistry for this.
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Right on. This guy knows what the score is. Just reading about him. Definitely wasn't tripping when he thought up PCR. Polymerase chain reaction. Kary Mullis.

Peace,
PL
 
I'm a computer programmer, and for sure my psychedelic experience has helped me to more easily envision the abstract information structures that are necessary for advanced programming.
 
Youkai said:
most of our aging software/computer programs experimented with psychedelics, as Ram Dass has said, psychedelics are in a great deal responsible for personal computers and the internet. I think it's in some of James Fadimans work that he comments of the influentual people ho took part in his creativity tests done under the influence of low dose LSD.
Click to expand...

I find it pretty depressing that corporate cocksuckers like Steve Jobs are known for taking LSD. I can't think of anyone less of an advertisement for psychedelics than some capitalist peice of shit.
 
Ismene said:
I find it pretty depressing that corporate cocksuckers like Steve Jobs are known for taking LSD. I can't think of anyone less of an advertisement for psychedelics than some capitalist peice of shit.
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steve jobs isn't that bad of a guy
 
Steve Jobs a capitalist "peice" of shit? Hardly, apple has always been about quality and ease of use, not market share. You obviously enjoy HIS products since you are probably not using a telegraph to post. Even if you use a PC, hell, PC's operating system rips off mac every time a new version comes out since the eighties. Jobs and Gates are filthy rich because they came up with a product that is EXTREMELY useful to every single person in a first world country no matter if that person owns or uses a computer.

The fact that one of the single greatest inventions ever created was possibly facilitated by the LSD that a couple of college dropouts dropped makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
 
Pretty interesting, and makes sense. One would wonder if scientists these days did that if we would of learned more by now, or came up with new good things.
 
Scientists do "this" ("this" meaning dose on LSD) currently. Let's just say I know somebody who knows somebody.. ehhhh? Heh heh... yeah people are people. I doubt there has been a huge cultural shift amongst the intelligentsia. If a law isn't appropriate I'm sure many rational people have no qualms about violating said law. Remember these guys/ladies are a huge part of the creative sector; they think for themselves.

Peace,
PL
 
Scientists were the first to make LSD. Scientists were the first to take LSD. Scientists were the first to study and write about LSD. Hippies didn't get in on the act until a couple of decades latter and after they got hold of it, the stuff became illegal.

I don't find anything surprising about the fact that scientists are interested in and have taken Lysergic acid diethylamide.

Cool story though.
 
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