The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1928-12-12
HUMANS BORN
IN TEST TUBES
ARE PROMISED
Advanced Bio-Chemistry May
Produce New Strange Syn.
thetic Beings
BY MILTON BRONNER

London, Dec. l2.-(NEA)-In ;
thousand years from now man, borr
Of woman, may be doing all tht
thinking. planning, writing an,
mental work Of the world. while mar
born of test tubes in bio-chemica
laboratories does the rough physica
labor.
This startling theory is advanced
By H. 7. F. Rhodes, the distinguished
young scientist who is general sec
rotary of the British Association OF
Chemists.
"We are just on the threshold Of
the discoveries chemists are max
ing said he Eve have almost
finished with analysis. We arc
passing on to synthesis-the build
ing up and the making of new and
valuable products out of the meane,
ones The speculation is. therefore
almost forced upon us that in time
we will be able to create living ma
terial.
\ Step Forward
professor Loeb years ago in an
American university announced that
he had succeeded artificially in fer
tlizing the eggs of the sea urchn
hat was an enormous step forward.
and now we know that man. the
most highly complicated Of all liv-
ing things, is after all only a collec-
ton Of cells.
I'VE know that protoplasm, that
wonderful substance which is the
very basis of what we call living
things. is made up of carbon,
oxygen. hydrogen and nitrogen. We
know the way the atoms were ar
ranged. Some day in a laboratory
some chemist may accomplish the
union of these atoms in the same
way. lie will then have created
protoplasm. thus causing life to
manifest itself. Perhaps it will not
end there. Having produced
protoplasm in chemical laboratory,
perhaps man viii discover some pro-
cess. now unknown to us, by which
we can incub2te, and nurse, as it
were. this substance so as to pro-
duce even more complicated forms
Of life. Finally we may produce a
living. moving being something like
ourselves.
This may sound like wild
dream. But if you look back over
the history of the past SO years and
see what science has done. you may
not be SO skeptical. Ancient men of
science simply collected facts.
Modern men Of science take these
facts, theoriz, about phenomena,
prove their theories and apply them
to new inventions.
THE dreams of ancients are made
to come true by the moderns. Cen
turtles ago men dreamed of flying.
Today we fly in airplanes. The
wireless tele. ,raph and telephone.
the movie and the tslkie, all the
things that we consider as common
place would have seem like black
magic to the ancients. What we to-
day dream of may happen in bio
chemical laboratories. may in 500 or
loOO years be accomplished fact.
Would Be Laborers
Suppose then it were possible in
a thousand years from now for a
chemist to produce synthetic living
things! They could be set to do the
workaday labor Of the world, thus
setting free those human beings
naturally begotten to undertake fur
ther conquests of knowledge.
would the laboratory created be-
lngs be men like US? Who knows?
PROBABLY not. But they would be
something approaching US in struc-
ture. Whether they would think
like US also is matter of specula-
ton. When you talk about thinking
you get into the metaphysical. The
netaphysicians differ among them
selves IS to what thinking is and
whether we really think at ALL"