HAS VORONOFF FOUND FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH?

Shannon News, 18 January 1929, Page 3

HAS VORONOFF FOUND FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH?

Cult Gaining Converts

danger of scientific

zeal

Df Serge Voronoff, of so-called mon-lcey-gland fame, is now in London, a dark, bald little man with seamed face and volatile French manners. He has been lecturing learned bodies upon the merits of his strange grafting operations, writes George Godwin in the “ Vancouver Sunday Province.'’ Such operations involving processes with living animals, contrary to even the. lax laws of England in this respect, are illegal. Therefore, Dr. Voronoff does no actual surgery there, but merely beats the big drum and proclaims a hundred years of life for all true disciples of monkey gland. _ ... There have been many whispers going'about to-the effect that the VoronofE operation is being done “on the sly” in England. But 1 however this may bo,'there is no doubt that this little Eussian is gaining converts, both in London and in France, where he conducts his monstrous monkey farm. Revolting Aspect. ~ The truth is, as Bernard Shaw has characteristically shown In a letter to a London newspaper under ( the pseudonym,of a famous, performing monkey, Consul, this, interchange of glands or oigans,)between roan and monkey have a revolting aspect for all their promise of a new lease of life and vigour. . Says ‘ ‘ Consul, ’ ’ alias G. 8.5.:

“Sir,—On behalf of-my fellow guests of the Royal Zoological Society, 1 must protest warmly against the audacious statements by Dr. Bach. /He declares first, that ‘ when the glands of an ape are grafted - on to a human being, the characteristics of an ape are bound also to 1 bo transplanted,’ and second, that, ‘ characterises possessed in-a high degree by the anthropoid ape are cruelty and sensuality.’- . “The implication is that apes arc more cruel and sensual than human beings, and that an operation tending to raise a man to the level of an ape would make him crueller and more sensual instead of less so.. We apes are a kindly and patient race; but this is more than - w T e can stand. Has any ape ever torn the glands from a living man to graft them upon another ape for the sake of a brief, and unnatural extension of that ape’s life? « “Was Torqueihada ap ape? Were the Inquisition and the Star Chamber •honkey houses? Were ‘Luke’s iron crown and Damien ’a bed of steel’ the work of apes? Man'remains what he has always been: The cruellest of all the animals and the most elaborately fiendishly sensual j' he will remain what he is in spite of all Dr. Voronoff’s efforts to make a respectable ape of him.*’

This is deadly stuff for the protagonists of the mofikey gland cult.’ls it Shavian exaggeration, or is there be-, hind a foundation of truth?, 'Voronoff's claims are those of the old sorcerers of the Dark Ages; he can so he avers, conjure back flashing youth, driving before his scalpel the spectre of dread death. He can, so he amazingly claims restore to the aged the decrepit, and the'diseased, ruddy cheeks alert and virile limbs, the full power of manhood, womanhood. A Modern Miracle Worker. If it is a miracle to make old men behave like beardless youths by a twist of surgical skill, then Voronoff is more than a surgeon; he is a miracle worker. A few years ago when this Russian made his audacious claims to be able to restore youth, by means of an unnatural graft from the. chimpanzee on to the human organism, he found so many prospective patients that he could not procure enough chimpanzees to vivisect and utilise as human spare parts. The Voronoff monkey farm at Mentone is the outcome of that famine in monkey glands, . There is money in the monkey gland business, wealth in the chattering simians lolloping about the doctor's farm, waiting all unawares, for the day when they will be taken by the scruff of the neck and strapped to the viviscctor's operating table. Voronoff, whose technical skill nobody doubts, started with simple gland grafts. To-day he undertakes to transplant other organs from monkey to man; he lias even attempted to crossbreed ,an experiment too revolting to be more than barely referred to. Dr Voronoff described with grim humour how a female chimpanzee, upon which he had grafted human organs, became "very coquettish and commenced to show human characteristics.' But, to most people, the transformation may seem .little-short of revolting. But ;what of the organs of this monkey “Norah”? They were implanted in a woman! The truth is, Voronoff, like clever men before, him, is a "one-idea" fanatic. He believes that in time the human race will defeat death by taking, as it were, spare parts from the simian family whenever its own cease to function adequately. Naturally, Dr. Voronoff has his disciples, men with "one idea" like himself. Beccntly an Italian protagonist of the Voronoff cult persuaded a youth for a sum of money to undergo an operation whereby his glands were transferred to an elderly and senile person. It seems strange that whenever critics raise their voices against these modern magicians, they answer: But it is for the, good of humanity. But science and sentiment do not always go hand in hand. Thi realm of experimental ' surgery is a fascinating one; it is, how.ever ,also dangerous. The experimen ter is apt to forget his humanity in

his zeal. It is no imaginary menace. Professor Neisser of Breslau. There was, for example, the. case of 1 Professor Neisser, of Breslau. This thoroughgoing Teuton desired babies upon which to experiment. He smuggled them after birth into his laboratory, and there injected them with foul substances to observo the developments And with amazing indifference to the beineousness of his proceeding, the German Disciplinary Court for*Officials, merely fined this scientific miscreant 300 marks, perhaps, as the French say, for the encouragement of the others. , Nor is that the end of this episode. Scientists are notoriously jealous as a race of men. Neisser published his results, and this goaded Professor Menge, of Leipsie, to challenge shero, This he did in the German ‘ r Medical Weekly.” “My experiments on newborn baby girls,’’ wrote this savant, “disprove the correctness of Professor Neisser’s deductions. I innoculated these subjects with very considerable quantities of disease-producing germs, g^C, * Professor Jansen, of Stockholm, admitted that lie used foundlings for ex-, periments because calves wore hard to procure and keep. Thure may bo readers of this newspaper who will- recall the furore over the Dallas, Texas, experiments, when no less than sovqntysix lawsuits were brought against human vivisectors who. had experimented on as many babes. The French Government has cast friendly eyes upon Voronoff and his works. At its invitation he crossed to /Africa to conduct a series of experiments upon rams, bulls and stallions, for he claims that he can produce by his strange surgery super-ani-mals in the s»me way as he believes he can produce super-men. Recently Sir Daniel Hall, of the British Ministry of Agriculture, went over to Algeria to examine the results of the Russian’s work, but so far no report has been forthcoming. “My operation,’’ says Dr, Voronoff, “confers upon the subjects of it a vigorous life that lasts until a deferred old age, which comes speedily and ends with painless death,” Long life, prolonged youth, painless death —-there are boons all humanity would crave. Can they be had in exchange for a big fee and a-Voronoff operation? Many British surgeon* decline to subscribe to this doctrine. They say, and they are entitled to be listened to', that to seek the unnatural prolongation of youth into old age by means of monkey graftings is to slip back into the ehicaaMqr and magic < the age of the Philosopher’s Stone. They counsel obedience to nature ’s laws' as the instrument of health and happiness. Are they right? They have all human experience behind them. Against which is pitted the nostrum of monkey glands in the hands of the vivisoctor.