REJUVENATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 November 1929, Page 4

REJUVENATION

TESTS ON CATTLE.

The imagination of quite a numbei* of people has been fired by Dr Voronoff’s claim to “rejuvenate” human beings, while sober farmers and stock raisers have also been interested by his assertion that his operation improves the health, size, and vigour of domestic animals?

Well, a priori, it is a biological possibility—no more. But the general public to whom Voronoff still appeals, do not seem to know that a distinguished 1 gathering of biologists and experts in animaß husbandry—including several of those most eminent in this country —visited the farms in Algeria to inspect some of the results of Vorohoff’s work, writes Eldon Moore in the “Daily Telegraph.” They found that the only tangible evidence of his experiments on cattle was one old bull, “Jacky,” who had been operated upon, and whose vigour was certainly remarkable for his age; but then there was every indication that before the operation “Jacky” had always been an unusually fine and vigorous animal, while he had probably received better care since the graft. The next exhibits were sheep, which had been operated upon when young, and were now heavier than the average, and carried better fleeces. But, again, they' were members of a very heterogeneous and variable lot of sheep; their ancestry was quite unknown, and it was highly possible, if not probable, that, they had received better food and bettei’ care than the rest of the flock. All the sheep had been in the charge of the ordinary Algerian herdsmen, who were respon-' sible for identifying the operatees. In short, none of the conditions even remotely approached those required for an exact and controlled experiment. Though these criticisms were pointed out to Voronoff, he has not attempted to reply to them, but has continued to ask mankind to come and be “rejuvenated.” Meanwhile, Drs H. Velu and L. Balozea, of Casablanca, Morocco, have been repeating the Voronoff operation with every possible care, and I have been privileged to see an interim report. In each case two lambs (first cross between Crau merino ewes and a Rambouillet merino ram) were chosen, carefully selected to be as alike as possible in weight, type and hereditary constitution, and they were secretly marked to render identification easy and certain. One of each of the eleven pairs was operated upon, and the other was kept as a ‘control.” After the operation, operatees and “controls” were fed and treated in exactly the same way, and when with the flock were in charge of herdsmen who did not know which was which. At regular intervals all the sheep were weighed, and exact records kept by properly qualified investigators. The result can be told very shortly. During the first months of the experiment the operatees did gain weight a trifle more rapidly than the “controls”; thereafter the latter caught them up, and, at the time of the writing of the report (over a year after the operation) were a little the heavier. But the differences are negligible, and the graphs of the two groups show in essence exactly the same picture of the rate of growth. There was no significant difference between the wool of operatees and “controls.” No further results of the graft need be expected now.

NO VALID EVIDENCE. 'An independent experiment of a similar nature upon black-face sheep tells precisely the same story up to date. In short, while there was never a scrap of valid evidence to support what was only an a priori possibility, there is now a good deal against it. But Voronoff makes yet another claim —that the enhanced weight and vigour of animals operated upon when young is inherited by their progeny, and that he can thus, by a few strokes of the knife and needle, ‘‘create a new race.” As evidence, he adduced the progeny of the grafted sheep. But the inspecting deputation found that the paternity of these was uncertain, while the differences in bone and fleece which marked them were indicative not so much of superior vigour as of different types of sheep altogether; as I have said, the Algerian sheep are a mixed lot, with many different strains in the same flock.

The other two experiments are not yet far enough advanced for anything to be known about the progeny; but Voronoff’s own evidence in this matter is worth no more than his evidence of “rejuvenation.” Moreover, while it may be possible to improve “the quality” of growing animals or to “rejuvenate” old ones, the “creation of a new race” enters the category of the highly improbable. Few things’ have in the past so fascinated biologists as “the inheritance of acquired characters,” and numberless attempts have been made to induce this phenomenon —all with a singular and very uniform lack of success. The reason, as is now realised, is that parents transmit to their children, not fully developed, characters —or babies would be born with beards — but an assortment of those microscopic chemical factors from which they themselves have sprung. The children do not start where the parents left off, but where they began, and are therefore uninfluenced by their subsequent careers. So it is unlikely that the surgical technique of Dr Voronoff will succeed where the skill of the greatest biologists has, for such a very good reason, failed. This unfortunate fact destroys whatever economic value there may be in the invigorating and “rejuvenating” effects —for the moment asuming them to be well-established facts —of the operation. There is not much point in operating afresh upon each generation of sheep or cattle in order to secure results which can be permanentlyachieved by good breeding reinforced by propei - husbandry. The rejuvenation- and improvement of human beings is desired for other than economic reasons, though it, too, seems more likely to be achieved by better breeding and feeding. In any case, before we discard these methods, it would be wel Ito let Dr Voronoff produce surer evidence of his .improvement of live stock. ,