Colchicine

Lysenko condemns formal genetics practically from the point of view of a layman. All his criticisms are levelled at subjects which were under discussion, controversial, and in the earlier stages of the science. The science of genetics is only fifty years old. Probably two-thirds of our present knowledge of heredity has been accumulated in the last 25 years but Lysenko ignores this latter period almost entirely. His comments on this period are confined to answering specific questions and these he answers from the point of view of the man in the street. Recently much success has been achieved in producing high-yielding crop varieties by treatment with colchicine and X-rays. According to Ashby, Lysenko's comment was "Mendelian geneticists who maim plants by application of poisons and other extreme treatments maintain that they are working out a method for producing fertility in sterile distant hybrids (i.e. hybrids between distantly related plants). The crossing of distant species and the production from the crosses of fertile offspring, should be studied in the works of I. V. Michurin."

Much of the justification Lysenko employs for his theory is obtained by appeal to authority. Several authorities are cited, but for the present only those concerned with the scientific aspect will be considered. The main "scientific" authorities are Darwin, Timiryazev, Michurin and Burbank.

Darwin's theory of evolution by a continual series of small changes really forms the fundamental basis for Lysenko's "new genetics." Darwin however, is not accepted in entirety. "Malthus' preposterous reactionary ideas on population" are rejected along with certain other "bourgeois" elements. The rest, the "materialistic" basts is accepted as true, final and unquestionable.