Medicine: Diet for Age

Medical scientists, a gossipy lot, say that the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and the Rockefeller Foundation seldom initiate any research unless one of the Rockefellers first makes the suggestion. Hence last week when the Rockefeller Foundation gave $42,500 to Cornell University to finance a study of diets which will prolong life, medical gossips at once pointed to the facts that John Davison Rockefeller is 96, his son 62.

At Cornell Professors Leonard Amby Maynard, 49, Clive Maine McCay, 38, and Sydney Arthur Asdell, 38, will direct the research. All are learned, industrious biochemists. None is a doctor of medicine qualified to apply his findings to the physiology of human beings. The trio hope to validate “the theory that the characteristics of youth can be retained . . . by special diets.” This they expect to prove by feeding mature rats a great variety of foods.