The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

PART ONE:

Before embarking on some commentary on the new form of Lysenkoism, it is reasonable to make a few comments about the original Lysenko. Trofim Lysenko rose to power in the early years of the Soviet Union as a champion of Lamarkian genetics and as a fierce detractor of Mendelian inheritance. He championed something that he called “environmentally acquired inheritance” . In reality, his untutored theories of genetics were a form of warmed over Lamarkian genetics together with an eye for socialist power. He was strongly supported by Josef Stalin and later by Khruschev. It seems that he first gained notoriety and the attention of the leaders of the Soviet Union through his “experiments” in which he claimed that he could increase wheat yields without the need for either fertilizer or minerals. In short, he claimed successfully for more than 30 years that he could adapt crops to their environment resulting in genetic change to those crops. In the years after his fall from power, it has become apparent that nearly all of his assertions and “experiments” were completely bogus.

Lysenko was appointed the director of the Institute of Genetics within the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1940 and wielded so much power and influence that dissent to his ideas constituted treason against the Soviet state. In the process, many legitimate scientists were removed from their positions, imprisoned, or in many cases, executed. It is an understatement to suggest that the influence of Lysenko virtually eliminated Russian biological science from about 1930 up to the time of his demotion in 1964. An index of the power of Lysenko over Soviet biology is evident in the passage of a laws which made dissent from his genetic theories to be a crime punishable by imprisonment or even death in 1948.

Trofim Lysenko was finally publically condemned by the great Russian physicist, Andrei Sakharov, in 1964 at the General Assembly of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Dr. Sahkarov said: “He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and genetics in particular, for dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists.” It is a notable sidelight that Nikita Khruschev, The First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, an ardent supporter of Lysenko was removed and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev at about the same time in 1964.

This information and more can be found in wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Lysenkoism and http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Trofim_Lysenko .

The reasons behind the horrible years of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union go beyond mere fraud. He was directly responsible for the execution of some of the leading geneticists of the Soviet Union. He destroyed at least one generation probably more of Soviet biologists and their potential scientific production. Was this just some disagreement over interpretations of biological or genetic phenomena? It seems that Lysenko in addition to being a devoted disciple of Baptiste La Marck, he was first and foremost—anti- Mendelian. Why? It is at this point that the story of Lysenko becomes germane to the current e-l discussions about Haekel and his concept of phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny, and even the significance of fossilized human skulls.
Why would Lysenko have disliked the principle of heredity proposed by Mendel? The answer is relatively simple: form and structure–anatomy- -the linkage of genetics and structure. The Laws of Heredity as proposed and proven by Gregor Mendel linked genetics to physical form. Those familiar with Mendel’s Laws might recall that he crossed peas of various characteristics. Some peas were tall while others short. Some had smooth seeds while other had wrinkled seeds. ALL of Mendel’s observation revolved about careful observation and the form of the plant and its seeds. Mendel was completely ignorant of the structure of DNA (as was LaMarck and Lysenko). His only means of observing genetic change/inheritance of characteristics was physical structure and form. Lysenko simply eliminated physical form from the equation and insisted that genetics was whatever he said it was. Is this beginning to sound at little like the insistence of the primacy of mutation in evolution or the linkage of populations through small comparisons of genetics while ignoring physical characteristics like eye color, skin color, bone structure, hair color, geographical location, etc.?

Lysenko, in what appears to have been communist zeal, attempted to link genetics and/or heditary to environmental influences while completely eliminating form or structure, i.e., anatomy. This basic conceptual disagreement between Lamarkian and Mendelian genetics has not changed up to today as I will attempt to show in the next few days.
There are several key elements to Lysenkoism:

1. The theories of Lysenko are based upon Lamarckism and illustrated by his concept of “environmentally acquired inheritance” .
2. Lysenko was brutally anti-scientific and sought to eliminate all theories and concepts other than his own. His crowning achievement was Stalin’s decision to criminalize all dissent from Lysenkoism. This is startlingly similar to the AMS proclamation that “all professional biologists agree—” when, in fact, they don’t. Those who agree are generally “Lysenkoists” and molecular biologists. Mainstream biologists in either anatomy or zoology vociferously disagree with the concepts promoted by AMS, Lewontin, Diamond, Venter, et al. The underlying principle of the science of anatomy is “form denotes function”. Molecular biologists comprise only a part of the discipline of life sciences. The anatomists are firmly Mendelian and, hence, Darwinian in their scientific convictions. Most molecular biologists are by their current positions Lysenkoists or adherents to Lamarkianism. They could not possibly be Mendelian without linking physical form-structure to genetics. Molecular biologists can’t link physical form to genetics without destroying the dogma of their various political positions. Their solution to physical structure is to ignore it or deny that it even exists.

3. Mendel linked genetic inheritance to physical form. This is accepted by virtually all traditional/ classical biologists from anatomy, physiology, and zoology. This is the crux of the argument against Lamarkianism. The key to all Lysenko theory lies in the connection of genetic inheritance to the environment rather than to physical form. This is the night/day difference between Mendel and legitimate biological science on one hand and the pseudoscience of Lysenko and the modern molecular biologists attempting in nearly every way possible to eliminate form or structure from the equation of inheritance. This is why AMS objects to the work of Haekel. It has little if anything to do with what he and the creationists/ intelligent design fundamentalists believe is fraud. It doesn’t even have much to do with its implication for evolution. Haekel equated form or structure to genetic inheritance just as Mendel linked those elements in the Laws of Heredity. This is the objection of the modern Lysenkoists!
Most certainly, this matter is very complex. The relationship of structural form to genetic inheritance lies at the heart of this entire issue. Certainly many religious fundamentalists seek to discredit Haekel. Religion appears to be a very small part of either the machinations of Lysenko or the modern version of the same thing–the molecular biologists who object to any linkage between structural form and genetics. The modern Lysenkoists are what AMS is calling “professional biologists”. Virtually every one of these “biologists” is either a biochemist, scientific reductionist, and in many cases simply an ardent supporter of a classless, raceless human society.