Walter Lippmann & The Sex Life of Bugs

Can Walter Lippmann wipe out bugs? Possibly. After observing 1,500 tiny European Pyrrhocoris apterus bugs, Czechoslovakia's Dr. Karel Slama and Harvard's Dr. Carroll M. Williams report that a chemical substance in American newsprint prevented these insects from maturing into adults. Strangely, they grew into oversized larvae but could never reproduce.

The biochemists put the insects in contact with pieces of U.S. newspapers, starting with a Walter Lippmann column from the Boston Globe ("That seemed like a good beginning," says Williams) and going on to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. A substance in the wood pulp used to make U.S. newsprint acts much like the juvenile hormone that young bugs secrete. This hormone keeps the bugs immature until they are ready for metamorphosis; only after its flow is stopped can the bugs become adult. When the insects come in contact with the paper, they absorb the hormonelike chemical through their feet and antennae.

Slama and Williams believe that different insects have different kinds of juvenile hormones. By isolating these hormones, scientists may find ways to eliminate insects selectively, without using sprays that endanger the lives of higher animals and useful insects. Ground-up newspapers may be a ready source of a hormonelike chemical to control some bugs.

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