LYSENKO CONTROVERSY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 529, 12 August 1949, Page 20

LYSENKO CONTROVERSY

Sir.-In The Listener of May 6, Dr. O. H. Frankel devotes a lot of space to the case of N. I. Vavilov, formerly president of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the U.S.S.R. and obviously infers that the Soviet State was responsible for Vavilov’s death. But readers are none the wiser. Vavilov was "shot during the war while trying to escape," "died in North East Siberia," and "died at Saratov in 1942." Dr. Frankel evidently doesn’t know himself. He can only speculate. Biologists in fear of meeting the assumed fate of Vavilov, would hardly speak as did Zavadovsky and other geneticists at the Academy discussion last August. The truth of the ‘matter is that the Vavilov school failed to produce strains equal to those already existing in Russia, and consequently, its leading exponents have been removed from key posts but they still retain important positions and even their chairs in the Academy, Lysenko and his followers have succeeded in winning due recognition for their work, but not without a hard fight against the orthodox geneticists who prevented Lysenko’s theories being applied in the institutes under their control. Is it only in the Soviet Union that the State "takes sides, judges and condemns?" In-the U.S.A. the State is spending millions of dollars in research | for perfecting atomic and other weapons of war, and scientists and professors are b..ag witch-hunted out of: universities for supporting Wallace’s Progressive Party. How "free" is the. scientist under such conditions of political and_ social pressure? The important "practical ieatiilte obtained by Lysenko deserve a better review than that given by Dr. Frankel. Lysenko asserts that the nature, heredity of animals and plants can be changed vi modifying the conditions of existence uired properties handed on to ay ce generation, Here are a few

examples which appear to support his theories: Record yields in such crops as wheat and rye have been announced. Frost-resisting varieties of winter wheat from summer varieties have been obtained and are‘now cultivated in Siberia, where formerly winter crops did not grow at all, A new race of "Kostroma" horned cattle giving outstanding yields of milk is claimed. This race underwent organi¢ and physiological changes brought about by changes in the conditions of existence. Lysenko’s suggestion about cutting up potatoes for seed was not part of the genetics controversy. Lysenko did suggest the changing of the planting time of potatoes in the South of Russia from spring to summer and as a result brought about a remarkable improvement in the harvest, but Dr. Frankel does not refer to this important contribution.

N.

GOULD

(Northcote).

(This letter has been condensed.-£G.)