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Show Bottle Bred Babies Still Distant From Human Realization CAMBRIDGE, MASS. Babies born in a bottle (or produced pro-duced "ectogenetically," to use a more learned-sounding word) are still very far from human realization, real-ization, Dr. Gregory Pincus of Harvard Har-vard university emphasizes. Doctor Pincus is the young biologist who has created something of a stir even outside biological circles by starting start-ing the development 6f rabbit ova, or eggs, in glass dishes without the intervention of the male element or sperm cells. These "unfathered" rabbit eggs were Induced to start the normal processes of division and differentiation differentia-tion by treating them with salt solutions so-lutions more concentrated than normal nor-mal blood, and also by heating them to a temperature of 45 degrees de-grees Centigrade, which Is about 113 degrees on the commonly used Fahrenheit Fah-renheit scale. When this treatment was first applied ap-plied to the unfertilized eggs of such creatures as sea urchins and frogs by Dr. Jacques Loeb, about a generation ago, the resulting "parthenogenetlc," or "virgin-born" organisms were the center of a whirl of popular Interest comparable compar-able only with that aroused by the advent of the DIonne quintuplets. Idea Is Far-Fetched. But Doctor Pincus frowns upon any tendency to read Into his experiments ex-periments and their results the dreams of such imaginative scientists sci-entists as J. B. S. Haldane, who predicted that some day babies would be produced In bottles of suitable suit-able nutrient fluids outside the human hu-man mothers' bodies. In a communication commu-nication to Science Service he states : "Rabbit eggs subjected to the described treatment have behaved as though fertilized, and to date have followed development to early blastocyst stages, both In vitro and In vivo upon transplantation Into re- I clplent females after treatment. A more extensive statement Is not Justified." |
