Heredity by Injection

Can the heredity of an organism be altered after conception? This age-old problem has now been attacked from a new angle: ducks. The doers are Professor Jacques Benoit, who holds the chair of histophysiology in the College de France and has studied the reproduction of ducks for 20 years, and Pierre Leroy, a Jesuit priest-biologist and refugee from Red China.

Key weapon in their research is DNA (desoxyribonucleic acid), a complex chemical found in the nuclei of cells and believed to be concerned with heredity. From the Centre de Recherches sur les Macromollecules at Strasbourg, Professor Benoit and Father Leroy secured a supply of DNA extracted from the genitals of Khaki-Campbell ducks, which are smallish birds with brown bodies and greenish-black beaks. Then they bought from a reliable dealer nine new-hatched female ducklings and three males of the Pekin breed, which is larger and creamy white, with an orange bill.

Wonderful News. When the ducklings were eight days old, they began getting injections of DNA in their peritoneal cavities. That was last June. Nothing detectable happened until March. Then one day Father Leroy was leaning on a chicken-wire fence admiring the researchers' flock of Pekin ducks. He noted something new and called to Professor Benoit: "I think I have wonderful news for you."

With trembling eagerness the partners examined their ducks. One male and eight females were undergoing a strange metamorphosis. Their bills, which should have been the Pekin breed's solid orange, were turning greenish-black at the bases. Day after day the changes continued. At last Benoit and Leroy decided that they had new-style ducks that do not resemble their Pekin parents or the Khaki-Campbells from whose genitals their DNA had been taken--or even a hybrid between the two. Their feathers are soft and pure white instead of rough and creamy white, as in Pekin ducks. Their necks are set at a different angle, and their temperaments are placid instead of scrappy. Jesuit Leroy reports: "I didn't sleep for nights after we discovered the changes. It is wonderful to be close to the workings of creation."

Snow-White. Benoit and Leroy named their new ducks "Blanche-neige" (snow-white) and touched off a France-wide sensation by telling about them. The French press has been full of praise, speculation and wonderment, not unmixed with uneasiness. Many were the suggestions for treating infant humans with human DNA. Neither of the partners has any such intention. "It is inadmissible," says Professor Benoit, "to talk about experimenting on men at this time. We are only at the very beginning." Father Leroy sounds somewhat worried, but he finds refuge in the reasoning used by the makers of the first atomic bomb. "Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night," he says, "and wonder whether I am doing good or not. Then I comfort myself with the thought that Gillette was a man who made a wonderful safety razor that enabled one to shave without cutting one's throat. It is not Mr. Gillette's fault if people take the blade out of the razor and cut their wrists with it."

French scientists have not yet agreed about the validity of duck metamorphosis. To clinch the proof, Professor Benoit and Father Leroy are injecting 16 more ducklings with DNA. Their Blanche-neige ducks laid 27 eggs, which have now hatched. When they grow up, the world will learn whether DNA-induced changes can be transmitted to the second generation.

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