Kinda silly to suggest that the placenta "acts like a parasite," when surely the parasite is, in fact, acting like a placenta. There's no reason we would evolve "software support" for a parasite (in fact, plenty of reasons not to), but clearly placentas are, you know, important. Biologically. What with reproduction and all. Just sayin'.
A similar fracas happened with William Shockley, who won the Loudmouth Bozo Lottery for Physics in 1956 (for "inventing the transistor")and subsequently went on to advocate eugenics and this nonsense about racial intelligences. Like many Nobel Prize winners, Watson is a lucky blowhard who happened to be in the right place at the right time. I would point out that, by his own logic of biological determinism, his 79-year old brain is not exactly prime real estate anymore. In fact, everything he says for the rest of his life should probably be disregarded as the ravings of a senile old lunatic.
Kinda silly to suggest that the placenta "acts like a parasite," when surely the parasite is, in fact, acting like a placenta. There's no reason we would evolve "software support" for a parasite (in fact, plenty of reasons not to), but clearly placentas are, you know, important. Biologically. What with reproduction and all. Just sayin'.