You Can't Have Good Ideas

We May, I Believe, Anticipate That The Chemist Of The Future Who Is Interested In The Structure Of Proteins, Nucleic Acids, Polysaccharides, And Other Complex Substances With High Molecular Weight Will Come To Rely Upon A New Structural Chemistry, Involving Precise Geometrical Relationships Among The Atoms In The Molecules And The Rigorous Application Of The New Structural Principles, And That Great Progress Will Be Made, Through This Technique, In The Attack, By Chemical Methods, On The Problems Of Biology And Medicine.

The Nucleic Acids, As Constituents Of Living Organisms, Are Comparable In Importance To Proteins. There Is Evidence That They Are Involved In The Processes Of Cell Division And Growth, That They Participate In The Transmission Of Hereditary Characters, And That They Are Important Constituents Of Viruses. An Understanding Of The Molecular Structure Of The Nucleic Acids Should Be Of Value In The Effort To Understand The Fundamental Phenomena Of Life.

..the Truly Fraudulent Claims Must Be Discarded. But Novel Methods Of Therapy Should Not Be Rejected Because They Are Novel, Or Because They Run Counter To Some Generally Accepted Belief ("which May Just Be Biased"), Or Because We Do Not Understand The Mechanism Of The Proposed Treatment, Or Because It Has Come From An Unconventional Source.

We May Say That Life Has Borrowed From Inanimate Processes The Same Basic Mechanism Used In Producing Those Striking Structures That Are Crystals, With Their Beautiful Plane Faces.

It Has Been Recognized That Hydrogen Bonds Restrain Protein Molecules To Their Native Configurations, And I Believe That As The Methods Of Structural Chemistry Are Further Applied To Physiological Problems It Will Be Found That The Significance Of The Hydrogen Bond For Physiology Is Greater Than That Of Any Other Single Structural Feature.