HEREDITY STUDY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 47, 25 February 1937, Page 26

HEREDITY STUDY.

SCIENTISTS CO-OPERATE. CENTRAL KNOWLEDGE BUREAU. (Spccinl.—By Air Mall.) LONDON'. January 30. Problems of heredity from every country in the world are being collected by the Bureau of Human Heredity, Which is establishing a clearing house in London for world information. Doctors now believe that knowledge of heredity must be more readily available for the treatment of disease, and the bureau has the support of the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons. It is in close touch with ""the Ministry of Health.

All nations of Western civilisation are collaborating, and requests for information have been sent to the medical Press of the world. Three examples of the scope covered are:—

1. Tuberculosis —Ability or inability to resist the disease are transmitted from parents to child.

2. Many crippling deformities are so inherited that their recurrence could be prevented in one generation.

:{. At least 1.) eye diseases causing blindness are similarly transmitted, and can be abolished in the next generation.

An English scientist might be working on some heredity problem which is also interesting a scientist in Japan. The bureau would put them in touch with one another, thus bringing uniformity into research im *l encouraging co-opera-tion. Such family problems as the incidence of twins, the colour of a child's hair or eyes, stature, and other physical characteristics can be placed before the bureau's experts.