Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-04-20
HUMANITY IS WARNED AGAINST
OPPOSING FORMULA OF NATURE
Dr.. Davenport Sees Threat
to Civilization in Mutation
of FiIterable Virus.
Man, Without Further KnoWI-
edge of Combating Menace,
Held in Danger.

Civilization destroyed and even the
| human race itself wiped out by o slight
| mutation In some strain Of filterable
virus was the direful possibility pre-
sented to the Washington Academy of
sciences Wednesday night by DR.. Charles
B. Davenport, director of the depart
ment of genetics Of the Carnegie Insti-
tuition of washington.
DR.. Davenport, one Of the worlds
| foremost authorities on genetics, lee
| tured on the mechanism of organic
| evolution through the hxation Of physi-
| cal characters In heredity and thus the
production of new species Of plants and
| animals.
Influenza, he pointed out, was due to
one of the flterable viruses-organism
so small that they cannot be detected
by any microscope, but whose existence
is known, because they will pass through
the walls of a porcelain tube. The
same sort of organism Is responsible for
parrot fever, which recently attacked
the stan Of the Hygienic Laboratory
here.
1t Is characteristic Of influenza, DR..
Davenport said, that its attacks vary In
virulence from time to time, ranging
from comparative harmless and a few
victims to such a fatal epidemic as that
of 1918. The most obvious explanation,
he said, is that the great epidemics are
caused by new species which can live
under conditions that kill others, due to
mutations.
Now Held Almost Helpless.
Against the mutations of the filter
able viruses, he said, man apparently
has no protection and future muta-
tons may arise in the viruses such that
no human protoplasm can stand against
them and our skyscrapers will be given
IN hA hnf &c H. IA a.
increasing intelligence can so alter the
environment OF harmful mutations
among the insects and even among the
diSease-causing protozoa and bacteria
that they will perish, but the minuter
organisms, arising on the borderland of
the living and the non-living, for the
present leave him helpless.
Mans best chances for survival, DR..
Davenport said, are in development of
increased intelligence with which to
cope with forces threatening his deStruc-
ton. This may be brought about, he
declared, in two ways-by deliberate Sc
lective mating or by irradiation of the
human body by X-rays or radium.
Selective mating, he said, seems I'M
possible with the present organization
of society and the popular feeling
against 1t. Recently it has been dis
covered that among lower organisms,
Sucn as IrulI MES, the process OF evoIu-
ton through the production Of new
species is greatly speeding by irradia-
ton, but. DR.. Davenport insisted, most
Of the flies thus produced are detectives
1t Is doubtful, he said, whether 1t would
pay mankind to produce q great many
detectives on the chance Of getting one
new hereditary type of marked intellec-
tual superiority to the present race.
Doubts Result Of X-ray Irradiation.
DR.. Davenport denied that x-ray
irradiation actually produces anything
new, but merely causes arrangements
of the genes through which hereditary
characters are passed along in patterns