RT Journal
T1 THe inheritance of acquired characters
JF Journal of the American Medical Association
JO Journal of the American Medical Association
YR 1919
FD September 13
VO 73
IS 11
SP 838
OP 838
DO 10.1001/jama.1919.02610370036012
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1919.02610370036012
AB There is something almost dismal in the currently popular theories of heredity, so far as they apply to the human race. If we complacently accept the mendelian doctrine, the outcome of all matings and consequently the hope for the future seems to depend on the almost inflexible mathematical distribution of unit traits through the fortuitous unions that occur. Education, under this doctrine, cannot create capacity; it can merely enable an individual to utilize more fully his inherent potentialities. Training does nothing more than give an opportunity to latent capacities. Hundreds of experiments have demonstrated that acquired characters cannot be transmitted. Neither accidental mutilations nor intentional operative alterations in the organism become transmitted to the offspring. The children of parents with amputated limbs continue to be normal in respect to these appendages.Fischer1 has recently urged the reacceptance of the theory of inheritance of acquired characters, interpreting the latter in