VIRUS THEORY UPSETS TRADITIONAL CONCEPTS

Soviet scientist announces
new bacteriological discovery

CONSIDERABLE INTEREST
has been aroused in Soviet. scien-
tific circles by publication of the
results of ten years’ research into
the nature of viruses and microbes
carried out in the Institute of Ex-
perimental Veterinary Science.
Findings of, the Institute's chief
bio-chemist, G. Boshyan, suggest
that the orthodox view, which is
that microbes and viruses are of
a different nature, is erroneous
and that it may become necessary
to revise the entire approach of
medical science to immunisation,
destruction of microbes and re-
lated questions.

Put in the simplest terms, this
is the conclusion deriving from
Boshyan’s patient experiments in
the field of infectious anaemia in
horses: Contrary. to the view of
most contemporary scientists that
the virus is a substance without
independent life dwelling parasi-
tically in living organisms and
hence capable of being destroyed
when isolated, microbes and vir-
uses are but different forms of
the same micro-organisms and
are in certain circumstances cap-
able of transforming’ themselves.

In other words, Boshyan main-
tains that the virus is a form of
life, the smallest and most primi-
tive that man has yet been able
to trace. Viruses too small to be
visible under the most powerful
microscopes are known to be the
cause of over 200 serious diseases,
affecting human beings, animals
and plants, including hydrophobia,
encephalitis, typhus, measles, yel-
low fever, scarlet. fever and foot-
and-mouth disease.

Although Boshyan’s experiments
have so far been confined to vet-
erinary science, he and his assist-
ants have succeeded in causing
certain viruses affecting human
beings to assume microbe-form,

enabling them to be examined un-"

der microscopes.
% *« *

BY DISCOVERING a method
for isolating the virus and main-
taining it as an independent cul-
ture, Boshyan has succeeded in
establishing the biological law gov-
erning the relationship between
virus and microbe.

According to this law, viruses
are transformed into microbes and
vice versa in a series of stages, in
one of which crystals visible to
the naked eye are formed, AS a
result of their mastery of this law
the Soviet scientists were able
to fix in microbe form the viruses
of nine different diseases, includ-
ing rabies, typhus and foot-and-
mouth disease., ©

“Our experiments
Boshyan writes, “that the proper-
ties of the causal organism of dis-
ease, existing equally in microbe
as in virus form, can be used as
effectively for increasing immun-
ity as for curing virus-provoked
disease. ... We began to intro-
duce into the diseased organism
the microbes of the disease in
question. The results were re-
markable. Countless controls
made on horses suffering from in-
fectious anaemia . . . demonstrated
the high activity of this new ‘cur-
ative method.”

On the basis of his experimental
work, Boshyan has advanced some
truly revolutionary theories which
are now the subject of lively dis-
cussion in scientific circles. The
kernel of his theory is that the
cell can no longer be considered
the last frontier of the life of an
organism. “In our laboratories,”
he writes, “we have obtained from
40 different microbes, causing dis-
ease, their corresponding forms in
virus condition.”

Armed with this theory, Bosh-
yan has attacked some of the posi-
tions taken by Pasteur. In 1862
at the Paris Academy, he writes,
Pasteur gave a negative reply to
the question whether contempor-
ary science could create life, main-
taining that it was not possible to
restore life to microbes which had
been “killed” by prolonged boil-
ing.

Boshyan then describes experi-
._ ments he has conducted in which

viruses were subjected to 40 min-

'

utes of boiling and then passed
twice through autoclaves of a
temperature of 120 degrees Centi-
grade, and yet remained alive.

The fact that the high tempera-
ture treatment can reduce or re-
move the noxious qualities of mi-
crobes does not, in ‘SBoshyan’s
opinion, constitute proof that the
microbes or viruses are “killed”
by this process, for he maintains
that it is necessary now to revise
Pasteur’s estimate of their vitali-
ty.

“We consider that the innumer-
able particles of living albumen—

viruses — are universally spread
among living and dead nature.
Unjustly, contemporary science

considers them as parasites, They
can dispense with cellular con-
struction. Parasitism is only one
form of the adaptability of the
virus. These minute elements of
life, like microbes, play an enor-
mous role in the life of our plan-
et.” :

* ee *

FINALLY Boshyan poses the
question: how did viruses them-
selves appear? Why, he asks,
should we believe that life, born
on our naked and lifeless planet
billions of years ago, cannot be
born today among the abundance
of organic material? And he
states his conviction that life can

arise everywhere where the neces- .
sary conditions exist.

“The material for producing the
simplest form of life, the album-
inous clot, is provided by the mass
of albumen—nuclear-proteid—that
is released from the dead material
of plants and animals that have
perished,... Placed in favorable
conditions, which is far from being
exceptional, the ‘dead’ albumen
can become the material for the

creation of the smallest living or-
ganism—the virus.”

Application of Boshyan’s theor-
ies and methods to medicine alone
promises results so unorthodox
that their exposition is being stud-
ied. with the greatest possible at-
tention here. It is realised that
if they are accepted a new ap-
proach may become necessary to
the whole problem of immunisa-
tion as affecting virus-provoked
diseases, for they upset the tradi-
tional conception of infection and
immunity and offer the promise of
more effective intervention in cur-
ing and preventing illness.

Effect of the publication of Bo-
shyan’s book has been little short
of sensational in scientific circles
and has aroused wide public in-
terest in the Soviet Union.

LETTER TO PEACE CONFERENCE

“We are all spokesmen
for future, says Fast

THIS IS THE heartening let-
ter Howard Fast, eminent
American author now facing
prison for “contempt” of the
U.S. Congress‘ Un-American
Activities Committee, wrote to
the British Columbia peace con-°
ference in. Vancouver last
weekend, ~

To the men and women of
good will who come together
for peace, I greet you with all
my heart and with all my
strength.

You have come together to-
day in a cause which is the
noblest cause that man ever
knew—to make an end to war
and to fight for the future of
mankind.

In my country there exists
the greatest menace, the great-
est threat to world peace. In
my country, too, there are mil-
lions of men and women who
want peace, and who are be-
ginning to work for peace, 5

The hearts of these men and
women are with you. They may
not consciously be aware of
your conference. Many of them
are prey to the vicious torrent
of propaganda with which the
Truman-Acheson combine is at-
tempting to inundate the whole
earth. Many of these men and
women in my land are alone,
alone with their thoughts of
peace and their desire for
peace—and unable to contact

their fellow men so that they
can grow strong.

However this may be, their
hearts are still with you. Their
strength is a part of your

strength, The peace forces of
the world, and of my country
as well, grow and will continue
to grow because they ride the
highest and the best and the

HOWARD FAST

purést current of history.

We are all spokesmen for the
future and for mankind, and
there is no purpose which is
better than ours, and no dream
which is more glorious,

‘IF BOMB NOT BANNED NO FUTURE FOR ARTIST—OR ANYONE’ ‘

Avrom - areal artist of the Canadian people |

revealed,”

AVROM YANOVSKEY is a work-
ing class artist in every sense of
the word. Toronto is his home,
but his art belongs to every Ca-
nadian city and in the home of
every worker whose struggles he
has depicted in his drawings and
epitomized in his pointed car-
toons,

Watching his quick hands rough
out hard-hitting cartoons in one
of his famous chalk talks, you

realize that, Avrom’s work has
probably been seen by more peo-

ple in this country than the work
of any other Canadian artist.
Not in the galleries—although
he has frequently been shown in
them, But in the backgrounds at
huge public meetings; in his car-
toons in the old Worker, in the
Clarion, in the Canadian Tribune
and in the scores of other labor
and progressive newspapers; in

his chalk talks; in banners done
for parades; in costumes and stage
settings designed for concerts; in
a thousand and one places across

“from his art—he

the country.

Avyrom has never made dollars
is a factory
worker. (There are a few people
who would do well to remember
working

that artists, especially

class artists, must eat!)
But he knows exactly where he
stands, as an artist. Ask him

and this is what he will tell you:

“For every one of us artists,
whether in our paintings~we be
objective or non-objective, surreal-

Agnes Smedley's ashevée Be ¥ent to China”

AGNES SMEDLEY, American
writer and reporter, who died re-
cently in England, requested in
her will that her remains after
cremation be sent to Peking and
that all her personal belongings -~
too, be sent there and placed at

the disposal of Chu Teh, vice-
chairman of the People’s govern-

“ment and commander-in-chief of

the People’s Liberation Army. Her
body was cremated at Oxford,
England, on May 10.

Speaking for the Britain-China

Friendship Association at the cre-
mation ceremony, Arthur Clegg
said that Agnes Smedley died af-
ter an operation was performed
on her for cancer of stomach.
Persecution by the U.S. govern-
ment,
death.

s

he added, hastened her

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 2, 1950 — PAGE 16

ist, abstract, naturalist, commer-
cial or social-realist; whether in
our politics we be Tory, Liberal,
CCF, LPP, Social Credit or none
of these, there is but one duty to-
day—to work as one in the world
peace movement to ban the atom
bomb. This you will find exempli-
fied by such great artists of such
diverse approach to painting as
Picasso and Rockwell Kent.
“Every Canadian artist, if he
wishes to continue to use his
chisel, pen or brush creatively,
should first use his pen to sign
the Ban the Bomb petition of the
Canadian Peace Congress, Then
he should take the petition among

his fellow artists, to his art or-

ganization, everywhere, getting
everyone within sight or mailing
distance to sign. .

“If the atom bomb is not banned,
if it ever drops on a defenseless °°
city again, there is no future for
the artist—or for anyone.”

* * *

.AVROM YANOVSKY ought to
know. He’s been active in the
labor movement as an artist since
his first cartoon back in 1928.
Since then he has studied art in
the Winnipeg School of Art; at
the Ontario College of Art and the

American Artists School of New

York where he won a_scholar-
ship.*(He studied under Anton
Refregier, whose mural in San
Francisco recently caused a na-
tionwide controversy because of
its sympathetic treatment of the
workers and of the late President
Roosevelt.)

. Avrom has long been a member
of the Canadian Society of Graph-
ic Artists. He has exhibited fre-
quently in its shows both in the
Toronto Art Gallery and in travel-
ling exhibitions. He has done spe-
cial Jewish art work for many

_ organizations; he has taught chil-

dren and adults, won prizes from
the National Film Board, does
murals, and is represented in the
Canadian collection ofa Lenin-
grad art museum. He has sketch-
ed the workers of Glace Bay, N.S.
(see drawing on this page). In
fact, there isn’t much in the realm
of art he hasn’t turned his deft
hand to, a