By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - A day after an exhaustive
national report on cancer found the United States is making only
slow progress against the disease, one of the country's most
iconic - and iconoclastic - scientists weighed in on "the war
against cancer." And he does not like what he sees. James
Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, lit
into targets large and small. On government officials who
oversee cancer research, he wrote in a paper published on
Tuesday in the journal Open Biology, "We now have no general of
influence, much less power ... leading our country's War on
Cancer." On the $100 million U.S. project to determine the DNA
changes that drive nine forms of cancer: It is "not likely to
produce the truly breakthrough drugs that we now so desperately
need," Watson argued. On the idea that antioxidants such as
those in colorful berries fight cancer: "The time has come to
seriously ask whether antioxidant use much more likely causes
than prevents cancer." That Watson's