pleas . u In Defence of Genetics By J. B. S. Uatpang in the Sovict Union. Unfortunately, this has been made more difficult by ill-informed criticism of genetics by su orton of Lysenko in this country. If geneticists held the views attrib ted to them, they would doubtless deserve severe criticism. As they * “do not hold them, such criticism can only make a just appraisal of Sovict genctics more difficult. ae wi be convenicnt to take as my text the original form of an Me neat onal Commentary issued on behalf of the Daily Worker emended. According to this document, “ » “the moder mene Benctics Hatly rejects the belief that plants and animals i 1188 .o their descendants characters acquircd ; . . ae . und influence of their conditions of life.” This is justified by aqu ta tos from Weismann over sixty years old. ve’ ee os of geneties contain dogmatic statements to this . ugh they also contain accounts of the ef chicine, which induces charact i toh cohen ia biti : ers in plants which reappear i their offspring for an indefinite number of generations It is also quite (orpans ‘at changes of this type, including the permancnt y disuse, can be induced in single-celled pl animals, The greatest Amcrican stud S roloroah genet es, : t of protozoa: i Jennings (1985), wrote as f ‘eT t ‘the Protozon 5), ollows: “The facts in the P in ; Z rotozoa show that after the genic materials have undergone an adaptive ange, they may assimilate and reproduce in th og? . . . . c chan " dition, resulting in an inheritance of the change Thee is thus no general rcason why it should not in high ra Teas occur in higher organisms; no a rite vert way the gcrm-cells of higher animals should not re certain adaptive characteristics, and } ' hand them on fo destendants. whether they do so or not is simply a question of , e determincd by observation.” If this i i act, to b a . is is dogmatic Neismannism, the Pope is an agnostic. It is perhaps worth adding at smnings was a founder of the American journal Genétics bate may pe allowed to quote my own work (Haldane, 1941), 1 state ‘ can regard the gene as an organ in the cell, just as art, pancreas, or femur is an organ in the body as a whole.” 104 “Pgs a result rt T j . € > snalogy, and that in spite of this, so far as 1 know, no gencticists is of the utmost importance that biologists in this count oF should be able to appreciate both the positive and the ne ative : elements in the views put forward by Lysenko and his supporter . ~ omenon wh organism do not appear in the progeny.” ‘independent of the latter. In Defence of Genetics 2 J can only add that, sf I had thought that genes were never altered of their activity or inactivity, I chose a remarkably bad have attacked my opinion. “LAs, of course, Lysenko agrees, acquired characters are not usually = taherited. He refers (p. 87) to “the: frequently observed phen- en the altered organs, characters, or properties of an There is, however, 4 sense in which the commentary is quite correct in its statement. Until I read Lysenko’s specch, I had not - recognised the idealistic character of Mendel’s formulation of his results. He spoke of the transmission from one generation to another of differentiating characters (differicrende Merkmale). Now, in ordinary speech we do speak of the transmission oF inheritance of 2 character. For example, I may say that I have inherited my - father’s watch, and also his eye colour or baldness. A geneticist should not use such language, and docs not if he is a good geneticist. A character is not something which can be detached and handed on like a watch. Mendel was presumably a Thomist, and his differierende M. erkmale are merely St. Thomas’s formae substanitales ' in lay dress. 1 had given (1941, p. 20) as my ground for rejecting the “unit character” theory that it was too mechanistic. On both of these grounds it must be rejected. What is inherited is not a sct of characters, but the capacity for reacting to the environment in such a way that, ina particular environment, particular characters are developed. It is therefore incorrect to speak of the transmission of a character, whether “acquired” or not. The question is morc properly formulated like this. An organism X manifests the character" in environment A, B in environment B. If it remains in environment A, its descendants Y will not, in gencral, manifest the character B in environment A. But in some cases if X has been placed in environment B, Y will show the character B even in environment A. The question to be decided is how often, and in what circumstances, this occurs. The Commentary gocs on to state that ‘‘the modern doctrine of genetics considers the hereditary process &s something separated from and independent of the living body as a whole. Weismann put forward the theory that the living body is divided into two parts, a mortal body (or soma) and an smmortal hereditary sub- stance or germ-plasm, which existed within the mortal body, but In his view and that of his followers, 195 2am Ss * . +7 Lragap PBS TS SNe Sa Feast ar me oe ea ee be The Modern Quarierly ) \°" In Defence of Wenetics ility of genes. Ido not know of ch . Py woe : ‘ . oe tae , 7* ie . anges in the living body could have no effect on the hereditary Mt geneticists believed in the immutab pny who do So to-day. substances a is reproduced from one gencration to another Modern Piiecna aaa th ee tory organism.” -# ‘The Commentary cont “on material objects, called a the heredvary process depends . § gs do occur from one gencration to another (e.g. the variations other objects outside the oe tlegs Tesi the of a cell, and on _ Bc between grey and white mice) are simply the result of mutations like, so that a cell containing a zen cof a y t ey reproduce their -%~" and of the interchange of and recombination of microscopic bodies two others cach containing a gene of this cer am type divides into. . known as genes int the process of reproduction.” (In fact, very few sure whether one of these two is tl : YPC: eneticists arc not. if any genes are visible with a microscope.) Iiven Weismann did he original gene and the other | not believe this. If you take seeds from a gorse bush and grow inues as follows: “Such variations of types - a s a copy, or whether the original i 2:2 ones produecd. In the rn 7 scrapped, and two similar §- them under 4 bell jar in damp air they develop leaves, but no ce genes, so far from being ~ spines. If you keep rabbits of certain breeds warm they grow up o on. Gencticists them cool they darken, and s immortal, di tas al, die at cach ccll division. In the first a gene may persist}: white, if you keep . $ at most, if not all, variation, in so far as it for some time. i . _ million i a One co of about a thousand million. (°° are, however, agreed th - in its life, the chance that a en which it se mullion Spermatozoa is not determined by the environment (and most economically » .:, is handed on toa calf is probably less th ee fr om its father important variation is determined to some extent by the environ- A precarious: kind of immortality! $ than one in B taullioi milion ment) is determined in the way described in the Commentary. As an Not only are genes not immortal but tb . the laws of interchange and recombination of genes are fairly well wc reproduce their like. The production t ut they do not always known, and those governing mutation are being worked out, this _type of gene is the event called Tom one gene of a different means that we can and do produce animals-and plants of the faithfully reproduced that ina s ita bl ation. Dome genes are # type desired. than onc per million of the offs rin able environment, all but Icss This is not a matter of combining ‘“‘characters,” which are meta- are so frequently altered that this fre mceeive a simular gene. Others physical conceptions, but of finding out how genes, which are os Both the frequency of mutation and 'the J one above 1 per cent. material objects, act. To take a trivial example, 1 wanted a ycllow depend on the environment. Mutation f deaiatieles the change cat without stripes, and was able to produce him from a particular by temperature changes, by abno a foo. bw can be increased § mating, although no such cats were previously known, because including antiboclics, by X-rays bah on by various chemicals § 1 knew cnough about the action of certain genes to predict that extranuclear bodics which play a my HIGISaLION, and so on. The this mating would produce him, although neither of his parents and some of which, at Icast, c be tne, the hereditary process, * was ycllow. Unfortunately, in England I cannot work with any- to be still more easily affected by ¢ transmitted by grafting, sccm :.. thing larger than a cat. Thus changes in the rest of the. covironmentay changes. ‘f The Commentary continues: “Thus in the hands of the modcrn and the genes certainly affect the reste t th and do aulcet the genes, geneticists, genetics has become a science of statistical probabilities, are detected. The two are in no wa ‘nd 1c body. This is how they that is of estimating the chances that certain mutations and com- a relative independence, just as a °P endent, though they have inations will occur, rather than of trying to discover any laws of no marked effect on the heart . ange in the femur may have causal connection which could help mankind to modify and thing else, are a union of op - conversely. The genes, like every- control nature.” every environmental chanee ihe . aan if they were at the mercy of * To go back to my yellow cat, by makin always reproduced their like, oval ty would be impossible. If they I put up the chance of getting the sort of cat I wanted from less of domesticated animal and ; roti and even the production than one in a million to one in four. We do not yct know enough Ninety-nine geneticists plant varictics, would be impossible. to put it up from one in four to certainty. But putting it up to s out of a hundred would agree to this state- 5 to control nature. ment. In the first twent one in four 1 h to all -enty vears of thi our is enough to allow u YY oo. this century a number of It is utterly untruc that geneticists do not try to discover laws g the mating which I did, 197 The Modern Quarterly - of causal connection. Let me take a typical example. It is known which combines mechanism and idealism. Thus gencticists some- that over 1 per cent. of the babics of mothers who lack a certain antigen in the blood by men who possess it, die of jaundice before or soon after birth. This is a mere statement of a chance. The next step was to discover that the deaths were due to the presence of an antibody in the mother’s blood, which Icaks through the”. placenta and kills the baby. Once this antibody is found, we can | give the baby a blood transfusion at birth, often before it develops jaundice, and save its life. In future we shall probably be able to remove the antibody from the mother’s blood, and save those babies which develop jaundice before birth. It is clear that those who make such statements about genetics . are unaware of the existence of numerous books on physiological genctics which are entirely concerned with the function of genes, and not at all with their statistical distribution. But such state- ments can only serve to antagonise geneticists in Britain whose work is ignored or traduced, and thus to discredit Sovict genctics. It is, of course, true that Weismann believed in random varia- tion. Here is what Bateson wrote about him in 1905: ‘‘Variation, all agree, is going on still. Why not look and sce if it is at random? Unfortunately for Professor Weismann’s philosophic scheme, this is now being donc. .. . If thirty years ago it could be conjectured in ignorance that variation was chaotic, many know better to-day.” More modern geneticists hold the same view. “Judging from these results, therefore, the mutation process docs not proceed at ran- dom; it is pre-determined, can be controlled by altering the ccll environment in a definite manner,” wrote Gustaffsson (19-47). With these preliminarics, I may state my own position. I am a Darwinist, although Darwin (1879) wrote: “Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplication, and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted.” Similarly, Iam a Mendclist- Morganist, although Mendel uscd an idealistic terminology, and - Morgan wrote of the mechanism of heredity. But Morgan and his colleagues made the very great advance of showing that heredity has a material, not a metaphysical, basis. Their discovery under- went the normal fate of all advances towards materialism. It was mechanistically interpreted. And it is often taught in a manner 198 * Jocus, ae *. he still more remarkable onc of being in two places at once. We + should certainly combat such tendencies. But that does not mcan i that we should reject the large clement of genuine, constructive, 7 materialism in Morgan’s views. In Defence of Genetics i its father in a given as say that an animal has the same gene as I rin v an a if genes combined the property of indestructibility with The hypothesis that genes, or chromosomes, are the ae struc: tures concerned in genetics 1s certainly untrue, Since orrens work in 1902, it has been quite clear that structures outs! le ine nucleus played an important part in hercdity in plants, and in the -Jast fiftecn years similar cascs have been found in animals, notably i ila by VHeéritier and Teissicr, and in mice by Little Ma his Pleagies. Like the extranuclear factors studied by Michurin in plants, these can be transferred from one organism another by non-sexual means. The Drosophila factor is a L by grafting. The factor in micc 18 particularly interesting. i s found in milk, and on being drunk by the new-born mice, finds its way into their mammary glands, where it multiplics, causing inercased cell growth, and in later life frequently cancer. i. seems entirely possible that milk transmission may prove va va ne in improving races of mammals, as grafting can be used in plants. , It must be emphasised that a belief in Mendelism does not mea a belief that all inheritance is Mendelian or chromosomal, any more than a belief in polar bonds in chemistry implies a disbelie in non-polar bonds. Personally, I was writing of noone inheritance in 1924. In the same year Bateson, the apostle ¢ Mendclism in Britain, wrote: “As to what the rest of the ct doing, apart from the chromosomes, we know little. We think me in plants the presence or absence of chloroplasts may be a mat er of extra-nuclear transmission. Perhaps the true specific charac ers belong to the cytoplasm,’ but these are only idle speculations. y w a good deal more now. . te bes been said that the whole theory of genctics has been straincd by the attempt to incorporate new knowledge that it wi ; break down, and we had better admit it. I think that a Marsist should be the last person to admit it. Genes exhibit a good deal ° stability in their reproduction, otherwise heredity would be impossible. They do not exhibit complete stability, or evolution would be impossible. They behave as units in certain context in others they do not. It is not very easy to alter the germ-ccils so 199 ee PETS peng te TESTERS EE SN Tap es RT Ye Se Be ee o ’ Mee ne pr REE DI os Mangan ad ft BEA. te The Modern Quarterly: fees that later gencrations differ genetically. When you do ; cpa very, striking results, as when Humphreys, after iransform - one a ovarics of salamanders into testcs by grafting, got broods cont in ing 100 per ecnt. females. Every science is at first based on ° ‘ily a reproducible experiments, whose results are then cxalted int « : they oan ibe epi But we do not cease to believe in atoms because co . d we cea i i they can be changed. On the contrary, if they were. u shone able, I, as a Marxist, could not believe in them. meng Lysenko’s most striking claim is the production of autumn jomperature and other conditions over several years. If this claim s acccptcd—and the result has been re ult ha: peated so often that i ould be very rash to reject it—it seems reasonable to point out be phat tre gene of future gencrations are descended dircetly ae 1¢ cells of the growing point of the y i ve fe ( young shoot. It . cisely these cells which are affected by the process of vernalisation it is not surprising that when they are cha | at nged the germ- - are also changed, whereas it is very much harder to induce shana \ in future generations by changing the mctabolism of 1 a ;. Foot cells. " of aor om For this reason, I am seccpti | . ; ptical of the claims that i acquired characters are inherited.” It is, of course nee rei ope get a race of Pigs which fatten rapidly unless you feed your rell for a number of generations. There is n i L ai . ° : ow th out re Pigs which would fatten if well fed, so long feat ot there. And to my mind it is ridicyl jlous to suppose that all genes, and Perhaps cytoplasmic factors, responsible for fat or under good fecding, were there in the wi wild ancest oe Pig, and that breeders have merely combined them, ‘The estion 1s whether the high dict makes th material basis of heredity) ¢ i way that the ties y) change in such a way th i down more fat. It might j Aart a ae at, ght just as well have the o it cause them to oxidise their food idly, My o oe one 9 03 more rapidly. M iew i that changes in the i i dity are larecly due to t physical basis of heredity arc ] internal conflicts in the ecll. O t potent eacthods . Onc of the most potent mcthod producing them is by hybridisation of i vo distant tat theyrenn onl y bridisa n of species or races so distant y be crossed with difficulty. Thi ly b y. This does not merel give new combinations of genes of the pre-existing type but > changes to genes of a new t valuable to man. ype. Some of these changes can be 200 wheats from spring wheats, and conversely, by altcrations of ’ * more cognisance o In Defence of Genetics Lysenko and his supporters point with justifiable pride to the yery great increase in productivity which has occurred in many . parts of their country in recent ycars. If I did not regard its economic system as superior to that of my own country, I should “be forced to suppose that its mcthods of livestock improvement } were greatly superior. But “Iective farming is superior I am much more convinced that col- to capitalist farming than that Sovict breeding practice excels our own. If, of course, they can produce more wheat per acre, or more milk per year from 4 cow of given weight, than the best British or Danish farms, I shall have to change this opinion. . Certainly, however, we have a great dcal to learn from Soviet geneticists. We must realise that there is a lot of quite unjustifiable idealism and mechanism in our basic concepts. We must also take f extra-nuclcar inheritance and the possibilities of grafting. Here, as it happens, animal gencticists outside the Sovict Union can producc morc striking experimental results than any from the Sovict Union which are accessible in this country, though as regards plants the opposite is the case. We must care- ‘ fully study the results of Soviet experimental work as it becomes " available. But it must be realiscd that the results of experimental - work are not available until they are published in such a form ’ that they can be repeated. Every step to make such work accessible is a major contribution to good relations with the Sovict Union. ° Most British gencticists are, of course, seriously handicapped by . their divorce from practical agriculture. This will make it exeeed- ingly hard for us to verify some of the principal claims of our Soviet colleagues. We must also beware of idcalistic interpretations of anti- mechanist tendencies in Sovict biology, of which Shaw has given a good example in a recent article. In a recent discussion in London, some Marxists went so far as to deny that there was a matcrial basis of inheritance. Therc is good reason to doubt that any parts of a cell are only the material basis of heredity. Genes certainly play an active part in a cell’s ordinary life. But a Marxist can no more deny a matcrial basis for heredity than for sensation or thought. a. , If this discussion were merely academic, I might well keep out of it, as others in similar positions have done. But if the views held in Marxist circles are going to be of increasing importance in Britain in the future, as they have been in other countries, the 201 adore sys +r =e ree gen ee qien et : 1 we Mey e ST aerer srs a we SPONDS tert Sa eT Yew 2 The Modern Quarterly iE situation is oicrent. I believe that wholly unjustifiable atta pave b en mad . on my profession, and one of the most import earned as a Marxist is the dut i my fellow workers. We are not infallible, but we ne to a 0 iq he Biological Controversy in the Soviet Union “ and Its Implications . By J. D. Bernat 3 hold many of the opinions which are attributed to us S : . rE . . . . . ‘ 4 | HE importance of the genetics controversy im the Sovict Reven Union ranges far wider than the field of biology. It is already ENCES — being presented as a political rather thar=a scientific controversy } and has become a major intellectual weapon in the cold war. Bateson, W. (1905 oe : ? . VOD). Evol r . 7 . ) ution for Amateurs.” A review of > It is this wider aspect of the controversy that makes it possible ~ ble that it should be discussed by others than W. +] > eyy " . ‘Bateson, W. (1924). “Promeey nary. The Speaker, June, 1905, {| snd even desira Darwin, C. (1879). The Descent of sioloey. Nalure, May, 1924, P professed biologists who are inevitably influenced by the very Gustaffsson, A. (1947). Mutations i te London. tradition of genetics that is in question. n Agricultural Plants, Uereditas, f The duration of the controversy ‘nside the Sovict Union and the violence of its effects outside show that the whole matter is one of an importance that demands that it should be understood by all who arc conecrned with the main political and philosophical problems of our time. That understanding has now become much simpler since the publication in English of the verbatim account of - the discussion at the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Scienccs in August of last year.? There is no doubt that this publication will, when it is assimilated, give rise to.a new flood of attacks on science in the Sovict Union, and by the usual implications on everything else there. The way in which these attacks are taken up in the press normally so indifferent to science and are amply disseminated by j : the B.B.C., with the “accompanying distortions and inferences, make it all the more important to study the book itself. Like ; every other political event ‘n the Soviet Union, the controversy [ has been hailed as evidence of both wickedness and folly in the ; Lund. Haldane, J. B.S. (1941). New Paths in Genetics, London Jennings, H. S. (1925 . pS, fh. 0. 5). Genetic Variation i . Princcton. ariation in Relation to Evolution, conduct of the Socialist state. It has been claimed as a blow to the liberty of science, as a turning back to confused and antiquated ideas, and as certain to result in the destruction of Sovict science and in the rapid decay of its agriculture. The cnemies of the Sovict Union, for lack of more effective means of injuring it, have, how- ever, been proclaiming its doom for internal reasons for a very long time, and the event has, unfortunately for them, always , proved to be the opposite of their predictions. Iiven those who cnaves might by now be are still ecrtain that the Bolsheviks are | accustoming themselves to the idea that they are not fools as well. 1 The Situation tn Biological Science (Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1940), (Collects, London). 203 202