Long Life

Except in appearance, the transparent little water flea called Daphnia magna is a good deal like a human being. In the words of Professor Arno Viehoever of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy & Science, who finds Daphnia useful for testing drugs, "this little animal has a divine simplicity that is miraculous. Its fundamental biological responses are very similar to ours. It has nervous, digestive, circulatory, respiratory, optic and reproductive systems. . . ."

Another experimenter with Daphnia is Professor Arthur Mangun Banta of Brown University. Dr. Banta has found that the average water flea which has all it wants to eat from birth lives 29 days. But if the flea is starved in its youth, given an ample ditt in maturity, it lives 42 to 51 days, growing and maintaining vigor and reproductivity throughout that long life.

Despite Daphnia's similarity to human, beings, Dr. Banta warned last week that too close a parallel must not be drawn--in other words, children should not be starved in the hope that they will live to be centenarians. But the scientist ventured this:

"If conditions which affect the length of life in the lowly Daphnia carry over to man, and are reflected in human longevity, persons who lead very frugal lives until past middle age and then have generous living, may be expected to live longest. . . . People who have generous living until old age approaches and then have very frugal living or suffer real hardship, may be expected to have shorter lives."

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