Francis Crick, DNA & LSD

Typing ‘Francis Crick’+LSD in Google brings up almost 10,000 web sites. Many make the bald assertion that Francis Crick, one of the two men responsible for discovering DNA, was either under the influence of LSD when he conceived the double-helix nature of DNA and/or used the drug to help with his thought processes during his research into DNA.

 The story has been circulated on the internet, and to a lesser degree in print journalism, to such an extent that it has become an article of faith in the psychedelic community. The story is repeated endlessly on mailing lists and forums, used to bolster claims that LSD can provide breakthroughs in analytical and creative thinking.

It’s a great story, and one which goes a long way to legitimise the use of LSD as a consciousness tool. But the facts are that it simply isn’t true. It’s an urban legend. But how did the canard arise? The simplest method to determine what level of truth – if any – underpins the claim is to examine the sources and time line of the story.

Prior to Crick’s death in 2004 there had been no mention anywhere of him using LSD as part of the process of discovering LSD. However, just ten days after his death, The Daily Mail published an article on 8 August 2004, headed ‘Crick was high on LSD when he discovered the secret of life!’ (http://digitalseance.wordpress.com/2006/08/16/Nobel-prize-genius-crick-was-high-on-lsd-when-he-discovered-the-secret-of-life/).

The article, based on an interview conducted while Crick was alive, is a mishmash of speculation, implying that Crick used LSD as part of his quest to discover the nature of DNA and that Crick was involved in the genesis of the 1970s British LSD manufacturing and distribution conspiracy known as Operation Julie.

Journalist Alun Rees obtained his ‘revelation’ from one Gerard Harker allegedly a friend of Richard Kemp, one of the two chemists in the Operation Julie conspiracy.

Harker told Rees, ‘Dick Kemp told me he met Francis Crick at Cambridge’. Crick had told Kemp 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 also told Kemp he had perceived the double-helix shape while high 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.’

In the interests of journalistic accuracy Rees then visited Crick at his home where he confronted the Nobel Prize winner with this theory, only to be told ‘Print a word of it and I’ll sue.’

Presumably Daily Mail readers were expected to believe that the story couldn’t be published before Crick’s death because of his threat of legal action. Whatever the case, the story immediately leapt from the printed page onto the internet where it has spread and grown uncritically.

One site, http://www.book-of-thoth.com/ftopict-6034.html, refines the rumour even further to claim that, ‘Francs Crick who died in 2004 (88yrs old), admitted on his deathbed that he had been regularly taking small amounts of LSD when he arrived at the conclusion that DNA must exist as a double helix.’. The ‘Deathbed confession’ is a common motif in contemporary folklore (see, for instance, the numerous cases of deathbed confessions in which former members of the armed forces have ‘revealed’ their knowledge about UFOs etc). ‘Deathbed confessions’ are rarely, if ever true, but the implication that no-one would dream of telling lies as they were in the process of dying adds considerable weight to these alleged revelations. Nonetheless there is no documentary evidence – anywhere – of Crick mentioning LSD as he lay dying.

Graham Hancock, fringe archaeologist and psychedelic explorer, also repeats the urban legend on pages 469-70 of his book Supernatural (Century, 2005). Hancock does himself a disservice by uncritically accepting the story of Crick and LSD without any attempt to prove the story. No doubt many readers of the book will accept the story as 'true' and repeat it in conversations etc, spreading the legend further.

So what is the truth about this psychedelic urban legend? It is evidenced that Crick supported the sensible use of drugs such as marijuana, as he was one of the well known signatories to the full page advertisement in The Times of 24 July 1967, which called the laws against marijuana ‘immoral in principle and unworkable in practice’ (http://www.drugtext.org/library/articles/TimesAd.html).

Crick also hinted at some, possibly experiential, knowledge of LSD in a 1998 interview with Jeffrey Mishlove: (http://www.intuition.org/txt/crick2.htm)

CRICK:       …In the case of LSD, for example, you only need 150 micrograms to have all these funny experiences, you see. It’s minute. And that’s because they fit into special places, these little molecules, these drugs which you take. They fit into special places in these other molecules. They’ve been tailored to do that.

MISHLOVE:   Do you have a sense of the process by which hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD, or psychedelic drugs, actually affect the brain? What is going on there? CRICK: Well, I don’t have a detailed knowledge, no, I don’t, and I’m not sure that anybody else really knows. They have a rough idea.

MISHLOVE:   We know that obviously there’s a chemical influence.

CRICK:           Well, typically, different ones act in different ways. But a common thing is to see colours more vividly, for example, and often to see things move in a way when they’re not actually moving, and things of that sort. So they boost up in some way the activities of what you might call the colour parts of the brain and the moving parts of the brain and so on. But the government isn’t very keen on giving money for research on that sort of thing.

But support for the legalisation of marijuana and a working knowledge of LSD is a far cry from Crick utilising the psychedelic in his discovery of DNA. Rees’ article, being based on a third hand source with no supporting documentary evidence, is deeply flawed. The chronology necessary to enable Crick to have used LSD as an aid to discovering DNA also fundamentally flawed.

LSD first arrived in Britain during September 1952, when Dr Ronnie Sandison brought a quantity back from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland. Almost nothing was known about LSD in Britain at that time and for several years the drug was only available to a few psychotherapists and the Secret Intelligence Services (MI5 & MI6). Thus, the chances of Crick getting hold of LSD during the time he was working on DNA (ie up to 1953) are virtually non existent.

However, Crick, a Cambridge resident until 1977, was known to have used LSD later in his life. Crick’s biographer, having spoken to his widow, ascertained that although Crick did not know Richard Kemp and David Solomon, he did know Henry Todd (all major players in the Operation Julie conspiracy), who introduced him to LSD in 1967.

Crick was apparently: ‘…fascinated by its effects – by how he became confused about what familiar objects were for, and by the way it seemed to alter the passage of time’. Crick apparently took LSD several times, but this was many years after his discovery of DNA. No factual evidence has yet appeared that indicates he was more closely connected with the drug’s manufacture or distribution.

Perhaps Kemp did talk to Harker about Francis Crick’s later use of LSD and, as so often happens, the story became conflated with other rumours and a dash of journalistic imagination. Of course it’s still just about vaguely possible that Crick did use LSD during the discovery of DNA. But all the available evidence argues against it.