Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1954-07-02
Earthly Beings
Foil of Immortality
Experiments on Worms
Show Significant Results
By Thomos R. Henry

Growing old starts as soon as physi-
cal growth stops.
This is true not only Of individuals
but Of families and races. It seems to
be general law governing the be-
havior Of protoplasm. the basic sub
stance OF life. 1t is apparently the law
that stands forever In the way OF any
earthly immortality.
This Is brought out In two series Of
experiments described by DR.. A. I.
Lansing Of Washington University, st.
Louis, with creatures close to the bot
tom Of the animal kingdom.
His own experiments were with the
nearly microscopic. buzz-saw water
worms found all over the earth, the
rotifers. These little insects are quite
short-lived and are parthenogenic
that Is. hatchable eggs are laid by the
virgin females. They start to lay on
the second day Of life and continue for
two or three days.
DR.. Lansing established two par
thenogenic lines. He took eggs laid by
females two days old. When these eggs
Matched he took eggs laid by this Sec
ond generation on their second day Of
life. These were Matched and the eggs
laid by the third generation on the
second day were Matched. Thus two
day -old-mother race was established.
The procedure could be continued for
as many generations as the expert
menter wished.
Five-Day Old Mothers.
DR.. Lansing established q similar lire
with eggs laid by five-day-old mothers.
Now presumably there should be no
difference at all. Heredity was pre-
ciSely the same in all cases. The eggs
OF parthenogenic mothers should hatch
exact duplicates Of those mothers. This
was true except in one reSpect--lon-
gevity of individuals and longevity of
the two races as races. The environ
ment was kept absolutely the same
for all and all got precisely the same
food.
Adolescence. or the. period of growth
Of individuals. comes to an end ON
about the fifth day. The little worms
are complete adults by the sixth day.
The worms are obviously senile by the
fourteenth or fifteenth day Of life..
DR.. Lansing found that the mean life
span Of each generation of the Ave
day-old mother race was shorter and
shorter over five generations. Each gen.
Grafton of the two-day-old mother race
had a longer mean life span than its
predecessor. In every case this led in
a few generations to complete extinc-
ton of the "old-mother" races, and
the older the mothers the sooner the
extinction.
But If eggs laid by two-day old
mothers who themselves came from a
f1ve-day-old mother race were Matched
a new young mother" race was es-
tablished.
Thus. it was established, the mys-
ferrous aging factor was not something
which had in some way gotten into
the hereditary constitution. 1t was not
present in the eggs. It was not present
in the adolescent worms. It was uni
versally acting character which acted
as If it were hereditary but had moth
ing to do with heredity, per Sc.
Second Experiment.
The other experiment described by
DR.. Lansing was carried out by DR..
T. M. Somehow Of Johns Hopkins
University with a fresh-water worm.
the stenoStomun1. This worm repro
duces in a curious fashion, even for
worms-and in q way which theoreti-
cally should make the individual i'm
mortal. A new head suddenly grows out
Of the trunk not far from the tail.
splits of, and grows q trunk and tail
Of its own. The parent worm goes on
living apparently as before, needing
only to grow new tail to become a
complete animal again. After a time
another new head will appear, some
what in front of the new tail
Thus DR.. Somehow was able to es-
tablish two races, an old-mother race
and young mother race. The former
consisted of the new worms which had
flssioned from the non-growing por-
tons of the worms in front of the
tails. The latter was developed. gen.
Grafton after generation, from the new
worms which had split of from the
tail ends.
The mean life span Of all the an
terror lines was IS days. Four tail
lines survived "a days and one was
carried through lis days before 1t
was discarded. That is, 1t was con-
cluded, progeny of actively growing
tissue had far greater racial lon
gevity than those from non-growing
tissue
1t can be specialized, of course, that
the same rule applies to man and all
vertebrates with their far more COM
plicated methods of reproduction. Thus.
families and races grow old and die
that is. become extinct-as we'll as in
dividualS.