Genetics, survival and evolution

Press, 24 June 1978, Page 17

Genetics, survival and evolution

Endurance of Life. By Sir Macfarlane Burnet. Melbourne University Press. 230 pp. $l5. The Proofs of Evolution. By J. P. Lehman. Gordon and Cremonesi. 156 pp. $15.40. (Reveiwed by lan Blair)

Some eminent scientists, reaching old age and having published innumerable specialist papers comprehensible only to an elite group, as a gesture perhaps to posterity, are motivated to serve a wider audience through a volume displaying their science credo. On his own admission, Macfarlane Burnet, possibly the greatest Australian-based applied biologist of this century and one of the world’s original thinkers within a spectrum of immunology, virology, and genetics, has written thousands of pages on these subjects. He has also watched the work-force of people engaged on these researches grow into tens of thousands but “ ».. in some ways (he) now finds it more difficult to offer a short, clear accurate account of immunity than ever in the past .. In this small book he has made a valiant attempt to distill his specialist knowledge and personal viewpoint on allied issues into assimilable form for those unable or disinclined to study his work secreted in science archives.

The message based on evidence is that within the extreme complexity of biological structure and function including behaviour and its mental concomitants, our genes and genetic control including genetic error (somatic mutation) play the predominant part in what is happening to us. The genetic aspects of ageing, health and death, crime, and antisocial behaviour will attract particular interest.

The contents of the book are quite an amalgam — almost a disarray. Age and death are discussed before birth; then the genetic aspects of ageassociated diseases (with the emphasis on cancers); with behavioural patterns of our social life following along. Progres- through the book may be difficult, even exasperating for earnest inquirers, non-scientists, as the general human interest sections will have to be sorted out from much technical detail in the language of biochemical geneticists.

The alternation of coverage has the extremes; on one side good newspaper science reporting. On the other, discourses that Burnet may have given to his fellows in the Royal Society. There is no glossary of terms and some sections bear that kind of science affectation through use of words and terms not listed in modest dictionaries.

The question is unresolved — who is the book intended for? On the one hand there is intellectual stimulus as the scientist reveals his attitude, based on his research, to improvement in the quality of the human race; what might be done with individuals predestined to the tragedy of an intolerable life. Debate will be aided by Burnet’s treatment of controversial aspects of our life — eugenics, genetic engineering, abortion, compassionate infanticide. In contrast, the reader has also to grapple with the language of stochastic regularities, neural infrastructures, iatrogenic disease, and intrinsic mutagenesis, or is left in wonder whether he or she really got the message that “cancer is a black apotheosis of biological error.” There is an impression of pessimism for the future of humanity. The time

phase for improvement on a genetic base is too long. The gene pool notwithstanding, and Hitler’s attempts being repugnant, other factors based on behaviour appear likely to finish us off. It is interesting to speculate with Burnet on how man may progress when (or if) the population is decimated by nuclear war. Also concerned with life on earth, but only in terms of origin and morphology, the book by Professor Lehman, of the Museum of Natural History, Paris, is a translation of an original published in France in 1973. Aided by 109 excellent line drawings it appears to be a brilliantly compiled synthesis on current concepts of biological evolution. It is predominatly zoological. Evolution of the plant kingdom is scantily treated, as it usually is by those who have to rely on the evidences of fossilisation. Plant structures have not persisted as have vertebrate forms. Admitting gaps in knowledge on the origin of reptiles and to some extent, the ancestors of fish, this is a convincing survey of successive transformations wherein animal forms followed one another, adapting to living conditions

It is a dubious claim, however, bv the publishers that the book fills a long-standing gap in scientific literature for layment. Unless their basic knowledge of palaeontology, biogeography, systemic zoology, genetics (and other matters) is above average, they will be likely to be overwhelmed. Some parts will attract general interest; for example the discussion on the origins of man — not from apes but from Tertiary age primates. The author has not scrutinised the validity of different theories of how evolution has proceeded (Darwinism, Lamarckism, etc), but his presentation balances generally accepted theories against the irrefutable history of life as revealed by fossil studies*