Nobel Prize Winner, DNA Pioneer Watson Suspended For Racist Comments

London, United Kingdom (AHN) - Days after he made controversial remarks in a British newspaper, Nobel Prize winner and DNA pioneer James Watson had been suspended by his laboratory institution in the United States.

Watson, 79, according to the newspaper report, said Africans were less intelligent than Europeans and the "equal powers of reason" idea shared across racial groups was a delusion.

Watson's suspension takes place "pending further deliberation by the board," read a statement from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, New York.

Several previously booked speaking engagements by Dr. Watson, including that at the Science Museum in London and The Bristol Festival of Ideas, have already been cancelled.

Scientist and businessman Dr. Craig Venter, who led the private effort to decode the human genome, had criticized Watson's comment.

Explaining that skin color as a surrogate for race is a social concept not a scientific one, Venter said, "There is no basis in scientific fact or in the human genetic code for the notion that skin color will be predictive of intelligence."

The Independent newspaper reported that Watson had claimed Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts. "Testing" he said suggested the contrary. He added that within 10 ten years, genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be discovered.

Watson was a joint winner in the 1962 Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a material inside the nucleus of cells that carries genetic information.