Thursday, May 9, 2013

Francis Crick Discovered the Structure of DNA Using LSD


Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.
BY ALUN REES
picture of James Watson and Francis Crick

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 at the age of 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 legalize-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.'

Originally posted on: Hallucinogens

15 comments:

  1. Actually... he could not have seen the double helix while on acid as it was actually Rosalind Franklin who brought that discovery to Francis Crick. She is hardly ever recognised for her part in this amazing discovery... but a little research will shed some light if you take the time.

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    1. Very true, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_51

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    2. Anyone can edit wikipedia, horribly easy to disinform people.

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  2. so what. Regardless, the man who is attributed to the discovery, and obviously quite an intelligent and well respected person in society, used LSD to inspire profound intellectual ideas. Which in my opinion is more the point behind this article, and why LSD needs to be allowed use as a research chemical.

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    1. I agree with you about the LSD point. However, the point I think that person was making is that in that time period women contributed just as much as men in scientific research and were never credited for it.

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  3. I question the accuracy of this article; Francis Crick died 28th July 2004, not "ten days ago" as stated.

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    1. It's called a 'reprint'. Thankfully with sourcing... you know, that little line at the bottom that says "Originally posted on: Hallucinogens". Click the link to see:
      Source: Mail on Sunday
      Date: 8 August 2004

      God I hate people on the internet...

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    2. I know right,that wasn't very hard to find!! Knowing the effects of LSD,It would make total sense to me that this discovery was inspired by enhanced visions! I bet you that (Anonymous,at 2:43) has never tripped,that's her problem! LOL ~~

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  4. i'm tripping balls.

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  5. Love the LSD..70s kid .. Awareness!

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  6. The only reason Rosalind Franklin did not receive equal credit and a share of the Nobel Prize is she died before it was awarded. Nobel prizes are not awarded to dead people. Nobody ever talks about Maurice Wilkins, who also played a role in the discovery, and did share the prize.

    Rosalind Franklin was an expert x-ray crystallographer, and her photographs allowed are what allowed them to extrapolate the structure of DNA. Without her, it would not have happened, and they would tell you that themselves.

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  7. the fact of the matter is that LSD should be used to open our minds to everything about reality.to find our inner genius! just like manyrd keenen says "if ee quit wallowing in our own kaotic insecure delusions" and use what we need to cross over to the next conciousness level. that we fell from so long ago. we need to remember what is!

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  8. Some of the most incredible experiences I've ever had were on LSD.

    I urge you all to watch this:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQHiBFoDfE8

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