Kammerer Doubted

A few months ago the scientific world was sharply split by Professor Paul Kammerer's experimental demonstration of the inheritance of acquired characteristics on certain animals (TIME, May 12, June 18).

Last week this Viennese biologist arrived in America, fresh from triumphs at Cambridge and Edinburgh Universities, where he lectured on his work with fire salamanders and sightless newts, and convinced many of the leading British biologists of the validity of his findings. He was confined to his hotel room with a severe attack of grippe but was informally welcomed by Dr. Harry Benjamin (American disciple of Steinach) who knew him in Vienna, and a committee of eminent scientists, including Dr. David Starr Jordan, President Emeritus of Leland Stanford, Jr., University; Dr. Paul Bartsch, of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington; Dr. G. Stanley Hall, President Emeritus of Clark University.

Some of the most distinguished American biologists, however, including Dr. Raymond Pearl, of Johns Hopkins, and Dr. T. H. Morgan, of Columbia, refused to have any part in the reception of Dr. Kammerer, believing his claims unscientific.

Said Dr. Kammerer in a press statement : "I am quite prepared to face the criticisms of the American biologists. Indeed, it may be recalled, I said at the outset that I expected the 'hair of some American biologists would stand on end at the conclusions I had drawn."

Dr. Kammerer will lecture at Johns Hopkins University and other scientific centers during his six months' stay, chiefly on the subjects of heredity and "rejuvenation."

Kammerer's interest in gland surgery arises from the fact that he has collaborated actively with Professor Eugen Steinach, his chief in the department of biology at the University of Vienna, in Steinach's experiments on the retardation of senility (see MEDICINE, this issue). He is a firm believer in the Steinach methods, because, he says, he has seen them with his own eyes, and "always stands with those who are unjustly attacked."

Dr. Kammerer, 43 years old, of spare physique, has finely chiseled, ascetic features and the charming manner of an artist.

In interviews he has made several rather romantic statements regarding the pliability of human and animal nature as deduced from his experiments. His general position is: "Our descendants will learn more quickly than we did what we know well; will execute more easily what we have accomplished with great effort; and will be able to withstand what has injured us almost to the point of death." Specifically:

P:Future generations of Americans will be born without any desire for liquor if the prohibition law is continued and strictly enforced.

P:Animals adopt the structural formation of the surroundings in which they live for several generations. For instance: the octopus adopts the same texture and form as the sea bottom, the grasshopper assumes the characteristics of a blade of grass.

P:A Negro child brought up in Europe bleaches perceptibly, and descendants of such transplanted Negroes take on the skin color, skull dimensions, straight hair of white men, while Europeans living in Africa develop in the reverse direction.

P:Eugenics, which seeks to improve the race negatively by the elimination of 'defective germ plasm and the selection of superior parents, will be supplanted by the positive or "euthenic" element of building up and strengthening good traits and dispositions in the individual. Thus a race of supermen will develop naturally from normal parents.