Jim Watson obituary

My friend Jim Watson, who has died aged 80, was a committed psychiatrist who inspired generations of students and trainees, psychologists and nurses with his combination of humanity and applied scientific rigour.

Jim was born and brought up in London, the son of Hubert Watson, a teacher, and his wife, Grace, a doctor. From the Roan School for Boys in Greenwich, he went to study medicine at Trinity College, Cambridge. He moved to King’s College hospital medical school for his clinical studies, where he met Christine Colley, a fellow student. Jim qualified in 1960 and married Christine two years later.

After higher training in medicine he studied under Aubrey Lewis at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley hospital and was appointed consultant and senior lecturer in psychiatry at St George’s hospital in 1971.

Three years later he was appointed to the chair of psychiatry at Guy’s hospital, and was subsequently head of the academic department of psychiatry of the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy’s and St Thomas’s. While training at the Maudsley, he was influenced by the poet and psychotherapist Bob Hobson and by Douglas Bennett and Jim Birley, pioneers in community psychiatry.

As a result of his enthusiasm for teaching, a higher proportion of medical students at Guy’s opted for psychiatry as a career than in any other medical school.

Jim deplored the absence of training about sexuality for medical students and trainees and he established a popular course on this topic. Together with Christine, a consultant and senior lecturer in sexual and reproductive healthcare, he established a new sex and relationship problem clinic at Guy’s.

Jim described himself as a “Christian agnostic” and he promoted “respectful conversation” as an essential therapeutic tool, influenced by Samuel Tuke, the Quaker. He detested cant and bureaucracy and believed that psychiatrists had to tolerate partial knowledge, uncertainty and ambiguity. They always needed to be aware, he said, that all they were doing was making a best guess about what the trouble is, what caused it, what should be done about it and what was going to happen in the future.

When interviewed in 1974 for his professorial post at Guy’s he was asked: “What is the most important science underpinning psychiatry?” He replied psychology, but after 25 years working in a deprived inner-city area, he concluded that sociology is a more useful discipline. In a recent lecture, he reminded his audience that most of the beneficial effect of any type of psychotherapy is attributable to non-specific factors, particularly “accurate empathy” and “positive regard”.

After his retirement in 2000, Jim and Christine moved to the Cotswolds. As a keen gardener he grew vegetables. He was also active in his local church, in a patient support group and as a trustee of the Soundwell music therapy trust.

He is survived by Christine, their four sons, Peter, Andrew, John and Robert, and seven grandchildren.

Jim Watson obituary

If I had been queen for a day, this would be a month of genuine foods, not detoxers’ nauseous green slime | Christie Watson

I would ban juicing in January. Absolutely. Prison for all juicers. For any person skulking about Holland &amp Barrett looking for spirulina or chia seed or stevia or aloe vera anything that appears like it may well be excreted from a snail. In truth: no detoxing whatsoever. On New Year’s Eve Gwyneth Paltrow would be escorted to a safe location, to resurface only in February.

I would also force the meals organizations to publish warnings on practically every thing: packets and jars and tins: “Invisible sugar in this foods is addictive and will make you body fat and sick”. Or: “You may as effectively give your little one a cigarette as feed them this, because the extended-term well being consequences are as severe”. And extra hormones in meat and milk would be outlawed. We have ample super-size young children hitting puberty at the age of eight previously.

In each and every store there would be a greater assortment of fresh, unadulterated, reasonably priced foods and drink to outweigh their additive-ridden, vitamin-deficient counterparts stuffed with secret sugar. With actual meals filling our supermarkets, and fake meals labelled accordingly, we wouldn’t want extreme food obsessions in January.

My flirtation with juicing started on 1 January 2014. “If it seems to be like Angel the hamster would consume or drink it, then it is healthier. It’s excellent for your insides,” I informed my suspicious children, handing every a glass of green slime. For three tiny servings, the juicer had devoured twenty quid’s worth of natural greens, but I was established to ply the little ones with micro-nutrients. And then I tasted it myself. I felt dangerously nauseous, my young children hated me, and I was miserable.

The outlawing of detoxing would make certain no more: one) individuals feeling dizzy, unable to focus or drive two) working to the toilet with diarrhoea, a consequence of the three cucumbers, the pack of spinach, and the 17 sticks of celery it will take to make each and every shot three) generating daily journeys to foodie Borough Marketplace for huge quantities of veggies four) taking painkillers for the headaches and abdomen cramps this diet program causes and five) even thinking about juicing raw kale, which tastes so rank I can get rid of bodyweight now just remembering it.

“Instead of all this weird overall health juice,” my 10-12 months-previous asked, “can you make it your new year’s resolution up coming year to have enjoyable? Obtaining enjoyable is a lot far better for your insides.” A clever lady, my daughter. The variety of smart courtier a queen would want all around.

If I had been queen for a day, this would be a month of genuine foods, not detoxers’ nauseous green slime | Christie Watson

DNA pioneer James Watson sets out radical concept for selection of illnesses

James Watson, 85, says he produced his theory soon after pondering why exercising appears to benefit people with higher blood sugar. Photograph: Edmond Terakopian/PA

Not satisfied with his work that unravelled the double helix construction of DNA and landed him a share of a Nobel prize half a century ago, James Watson has come up with a radical concept for diabetes, dementia, heart ailment and cancer.

The 85-year-outdated scientist has turned to the pages of the Lancet medical journal to set forth his grand notion, which some academics say might not have observed the light of day had it come from anyone else.

Watson, who stepped down as director of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in New York in 2007 after the Times quoted his views on Africa and intelligence, has organized a conference at the lab this 12 months to discover his most recent hypothesis.

Writing in the Lancet, Watson claims that late onset, or variety two diabetes, is typically considered to be induced by oxidation in the physique that causes irritation and kills off pancreatic cells. But he thinks the root of that irritation is fairly different: “The basic result in, I suggest, is a lack of biological oxidants, not an excess,” he writes.

Watson, a keen singles tennis player, says he developed his theory right after pondering why workout appeared to advantage individuals with high blood sugar, an early indicator of potential diabetes. Workout developed “reactive oxygen species” that were extensively believed to be dangerous.

Other study fed into his thinking, chiefly a research by Matthias Blüher at the University of Leipzig. He showed that reactive oxygen species released in exercising combatted the insulin resistance noticed in diabetes, but that the benefits vanished if you gave men and women antioxidants prior to the exercised.

Watson believes that rather than getting wholly negative, oxidising molecules, such as hydrogen peroxide, are vital for the body’s wellness. In certain, he factors out that hydrogen peroxide goes to operate in a cellular organ called the endoplasmic reticulum, the place it guarantees proteins are secure. If levels of oxidants are too minimal, he suggests, the proteins grow to be misshapen and trigger the inflammation that damages the pancreas. And a raft of other illnesses.

Huge research have currently proven that antioxidant dietary supplements do not help folks to dwell longer. Watson’s hypothesis also suggests there is nothing to be acquired, although he makes a point of saying he is not experienced to give individuals well being guidance.

“Just about every doctor I’ve ever known tells every patient who is capable of carrying out so to exercise. I feel physical exercise assists us create healthy, functional proteins. But we genuinely want to have some higher-good quality research to demonstrate this.”

He adds: “We sorely need to consider a much a lot more critical and thorough scientific seem at the mechanisms via which exercising improves our overall health.”

Watson’s thought acquired a mixed reception from scientists on Thursday. A single professor of metabolic medicine was unimpressed and said the idea was not even novel. “It is only because of his identify that James Watson is permitted to present his woolly ideas in the Lancet,” he explained.

The director of the MRC Metabolic Illnesses Unit at the University of Cambridge, Stephen O’Rahilly, was significantly less scathing. He said: “He is exhorting more science to be completed on how physical action may possibly be beneficial. We want to realize the mechanism. Making the proper reactive oxygen species in the appropriate place at the correct time is essential for us to stay effectively, and blocking them may possibly not be a very good idea.”

DNA pioneer James Watson sets out radical concept for selection of illnesses