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of IgG or IgM antibodies to cow’s milk proteins, andnow bovine IgM must be regarded as a possibleallergen in this disease. IgA was not deficient in thesepatients, but Buckley et al. considered the possibilitythat a functional deficiency of the IgA system mightbe the basis of this disease. Surprising observationssuch as this one may point the way to unforeseencomplexities.

A HUMAN PHEROMONE?

A PHEROMONE is a chemical substance produced byone individual which affects the behaviour or physio-logy of another. The food-finding, trail-laying, andalarm responses of ants, and the " assembling " ofmales by female moths, are controlled by interpersonalchemical signals of this kind. The importance ofodours as signals in mammalian mating and progenyrecognition is a commonplace to bitch-owners or

shepherds: the realisation, however, that such mes-sages influence not only overt behaviour but alsoendocrine processes at a profound level really datesfrom the observation of Bruce and Parkes that theodour of a strange male regularly causes fetal resorp-tion in pregnant mice. The number of similar in-stances of chemical communication of a hormone-likecharacter among mammals of all kinds, especially thesocial forms, has grown steadily of late. It now extendsto monkeys, where the sex behaviour of males is

pheromonally disorganised when females are given" the pill ". 2,3Conscious olfactosexual phenomena apart, do

pheromones exist in man ?4 Psychoanalysts concernedwith olfactosexual influences in childhood had thoughtthat they might, long before the biologists arrived onthe scene. 4-7 It had not escaped their notice that theapparently functionless scent-glands and hair-tuftsin man are grouped in the areas of classical freudianinterest-breast-axilla, anal, and genital regions. Othershave speculated that the schizophrenic, many ofwhose other subliminal inputs seem to reach conscious-ness, may be right in claiming to be able to " smell "moods such as hostility. 8 Subliminal human phero-mones, producing attraction or hostility, have made atarget for ironical science fiction.9 9

A recent research from Harvard 10 seems to suggestthat we may need to take them seriously. It is a com-mon piece of folklore that women living togethertend to menstruate synchronously. Synchronousoestrus occurs in mice under conditions of close

proximity 11; the recent observations of McClintockon women students indicates that room-mates and" closest friends " do indeed show highly significant

1. Bruce, H. M., Parkes, A. S. J. Reprod. Fert. 1961, 2, 195.2. Michael, R. P., Keverne, E. B. Nature, 1968, 218, 746.3. ibid. 1970, 225, 84.4. Lancet, 1966, ii, 690.5. Fitzherbert, J. Br. J. med. Psychol. 1959, 32, 806.6. Bieber, I. Am. J. Psychotherap. 1959, 13, 851.7. Kalogerakis, M. G. Psychosom. Med. 1963, 25, 420.8. Wiener, H. N.Y. St. J. Med. 1967, 67, 1144.9. Comfort, A. Come Out to Play. London, 1962.

10. McClintock, M. K. Nature, 1971, 229, 244.11. Vanderlee, S., Boot, L. M. Acta physiol. pharmacol. neerl. 1956, 5,

213.

synchrony, compared with random pairs. Commonenvironmental factors (eating at set hours in the samerefectory, a common life-pattern) should have pro-duced synchrony throughout the whole population,if these were the cause, but randomly chosen pairsshowed no such effect. Room-mates tend to keepsimilar hours: in monkeys, it appears that lunar andday-length effects operate to " lock " the menstrualcycles to long, light nights.12 However, synchrony inhuman room-mates was slightly but not significantlyless than in close friends who did not share rooms:

proximity during waking and active hours seemed tobe the most important scoring factor in bringingsynchrony about. Direct " sympathy " would haverequired knowledge between friends of each other’smenstrual status, and this was rarely present, at leastexplicitly. The choice, after McClintock’s carefulanalysis of possible synchronising signals, seems to liebetween a pheromonal effect and some other subliminal" message ". In view of the primate evidence, itseems that the first of these is at least a reasonable

possibility.It will take a good deal of experiment-compli-

cated, in humans, by the number and " suggestibility "of human modes of signalling-to find out if a phero-mone is involved or not. If it is, the consequencescould be practically significant and not a little disturb-ing. Ours is an age which badly needs to control itsreproductivity by minimal signals. Without sharingGroddeck’s belief that human olfactory discriminationis as sharp as the dog’s, but repressed for infantilepsychosexual reasons, we might well agree that

response to steroid hormones, their products, or large-ring cycloketones which resemble them sterically,might be several orders of magnitude greater and moreeconomical via the olfactory system than by injection,and possibly quite different. The trigger amounts ofpheromones, acting via the nervous system, are

pharmacologically minute, and of the order of a fewmolecules. A police dog can smell progesterone on anobject briefly held by a pregnant woman. 13Most functional mammalian pheromones are, in

fact, apparently derived from sex hormones or steric-ally similar to them in outline: a few are long-chainlactones 14 or possibly phenols. 15 As to cyclic variationin sensitivity from the receiving side, it has long beenknown that the ability to smell exaltolide, a syntheticsubstance similar to the mammalian signal-odourcivetone, is oestrogen-dependent : it can be smelled bywomen only in the oestrogen phase, and by men onlyafter oestrogen injection. 15 This kind of phylogeneticfossil is in itself significant: there are remarkably fewmechanisms which are functionless.

Processes of exclusion are dangerous, and it mayprove that menstrual synchrony is behaviourallyor socially mediated through some other mechanism.If it is not, however, we may have a key to an unsuspec-ted and far-reaching branch of human biology whichre-emphasises both our mammalian and our social

patterning. It could also have practical implications:

12. Dewan, E. M. Science Tech. 1969, 20.13. Kloek, J. Folia psychiat. neurol, neurochir. neerl. 1961, 64, 309.14. Muller-Schwartze, D. Nature, 1969, 223, 525.15. Patterson, R. L. S. ibid. 1966, 212, 744.16. Le Magnen, J. Archs Sci. physiol. 1952, 6, 125.

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in insects, synthetic pheromones have been developedwhich far outperform the natural substances. Hippo-crates attributed abortifacient powers to the sense ofsmell. In mice, this appears to be the case. An ol-factory contraceptive would be no mean achievement.

HOW MUCH FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH?

ALTHOUGH the British Government intends to

hold down the growth-rate in public expenditure to anaverage 2-6% per annum for the first half of the 1970s, ’-there will be wide differences in the rates at which thebig-spending Departments are to expand (or, in somecases, contract). In these projections the socialservices emerge relatively favourably, with 4-8% foreducation, 4-7% for health and welfare, and 2-1% forsocial security at today’s benefit-rates; less satisfactoryis the standstill in allocations for housing. But the

white-paper is not a policy statement, it is clearly aTreasury document; and, as one visiting observerhas reminded US, 2 health plans in Britain tend to be tiedto money, not based on firm health objectives. In thefinancial year starting April 1, 1971, the health andwelfare services in the United Kingdom will getE2300 million (at 1970 costs) divided between hospitals,executive-council services, community health, andwelfare foods. To start with, hospitals will get E4 forevery El spent on community health, but this " willgradually change in favour of community health andwelfare services as the policy develops of providingcare in the community where this is more appropriatethan hospital care ". This intention, a vague promiseto develop family-planning and domiciliary services,and a reflection of the promised cutback in welfare-foodexpenditure (in the allocation of E10,500,000 for thispurpose in 1972-73, compared with E41 million lastyear) are the only health-policy statements to be found.

In his October budget the Chancellor of the Ex-chequer announced, without giving his reasons, thatthe grants-in-aid to the research councils were to becut. Not everyone saw this as much of a threat at the

time,3 but almost hidden in the latest white-paper isconfirmation that real growth in the research councilsis to be slowed down and more than a hint that medicalresearch may be worse off than the others by the timethe decade is half over. The Secretary of State forEducation and Science allocates grants within the" science budget " (mainly, the five research councils)on the advice of the Council for Scientific Policy. Onlya handful of people know how this body reaches itsdecisions. Average growth in the science budget forthe period 1970-71 to 1974-75 is to be 4-7% at 1970prices, falling from 5-2% next year to only 3-8% infour years’ time; this contrasts with 9-3% in thefinancial year now drawing to a close. Individualallocations are not projected beyond next year, butin 1971-72 the M.R.C., with a fifth of the total, is toget only an eighth of the increase to be distributed-a mere E600.000 of "real money", giving it thesmallest growth of the five. If the C.S.P. continues to

suggest this sort of differential it is not difficult to

1. Public Expenditure 1969-70 to 1974-75. Cmnd. 4578. H.M.

Stationery Office, 1971. Pp. 74. 9s.2. See Lancet, Jan. 30, 1971, p. 247.3. Br. med. J. 1970, iv, 759.

see that by 1974-75 the M.R.C., with so much un-alterably tied up in two big centres and in the largerunits, may have to tread rather cautiously in choosingprojects for shorter-term support. The C.S.P. is

reviewing the science budget to see if some of theresearch projects belong more properly in industryand if there is any duplication of effort. Some M.R.C.projects-basic biology and psychology, for example-inevitably overlap the work of other research councils,but demarcation in psychology and related specialtieshas already been settled,5 the M.R.C.’s support formolecular biology is internationally respected, andfew of its projects can in any way be regarded as moreappropriate to the industrial research laboratory. Ifthe C.S.P. comes to the same conclusion the futurefor medical research might seem less gloomy.

FIFTY YEARS OF CULTURE

THE National Collection of Type Cultures, estab-lished in London in 1920, exists to provide authen-ticated strains of bacteria for scientists in the United

Kingdom and elsewhere. At first it accepted all kinds ofbacteria, but since 1947 the Collection has held onlybacteria of medical and veterinary interest. The presentholding is about 3000 cultures distributed among777 species and 71 genera. To mark the 50th anniver-sary of this renowned piece of bacteriological history,Dr. S. P. Lapage, who succeeded Dr. S. T. Cowanas curator of the Collection in 1965, and his colleaguesheld an open day last week. Though, since 1949, theN.C.T.C. has been housed in the grounds of the CentralPublic Health Laboratory, Colindale, the precisenature of the liaison is a little obscure. Explaining thedifficulty of determining who belonged to whom,Sir James Howie, director of the Public Health

Laboratory Service, left no doubt, however, that thearrangement was eminently satisfactory from the

point of view of the P.H.L.S.When the Collection began under the directorship

of Dr. (later Sir) John Ledingham, its quarters werethe Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in ChelseaBridge Road. For its first 21 years its curator was Dr.R. St. John Brooks; and until 1949 Miss MabelRhodes, who attended the 50th birthday celebrations,was assistant curator. Under their painstakingguidance the Collection expanded rapidly; and in1934 freeze-drying was introduced, after Dr. Brookshad seen the Sordelli technique in Buenos Aires. WhenDr. Cowan took over in 1947 the total number ofcultures was about 5000, and the work of maintenanceand distribution in postwar conditions was heavy.In the next few years groups of organisms not ofmedical or veterinary interest were transferred to otherinstitutes in this country. By 1949, the time of themove to Colindale, the number of cultures distributedyearly had reached 6500, and it has not varied greatlyfrom that figure since. Nowadays the N.C.T.C.continues to serve an army of scientists, for whom itis an almost-taken-for-granted source of unobtrusivedependability.4. Nature, 1970, 228, 400.5. Social Science Research Council. Annual Report for 1969-70. See

Lancet, 1970, ii, 404.