The State Department today confirmed a report that an American visa was denied to Dr. Ernst B. Chain, Nobel prize winner for his co-discovery of penicillin, who was scheduled to be one of the principal speakers at the Weizmann Institute dinner in New York last week given in honor of the 77th birthday of the President of Israel.
Under Secretary of State James E. Webb emphasized that the denial of the visa was based on existing laws. Visa issuance, he declared, is covered by laws enacted by Congress and visas cannot be issued or denied at the discretion of the Secretary of State. Mr. Webb indicated that he could not put any further light on the case.
Another State Department spokesman stated that it is the policy of the Department not to give the reasons for barring a person but only to say that he is “in-admissable.” It was indicated that Dr. Chain, the Jewish scientist who was born in Russia but left the country in his early youth and lived in Germany until the Nazis came to power, was barred under the terms of the Internal Security Act, the so-called McCarran Act which was vigorously opposed by Senator Herbert H. Lehman and other liberals.
Records of the State Department show that Dr. Chain was denied a U.S. visa earlier this year when he sought to come from Rome to a meeting of the United Nations World Health Organization in New York. Dr. Chain, who is chairman of the World Health Organization’s five-man expert committee on antibiotics, was to discuss penicillin production and to call on institutions to promote standardization and availability of penicillin strains.
DR. CHAIN PUZZLED BY STATE DEPARTMENT’S ACTION
A letter of protest by Dr. Chain was made public today, with his permission, by Meyer Weisgal, chairman of the executive council of the Weizmann Institute. In his letter, Dr. Chain emphasized that he never had any contact with politics and pointed out that the State Department’s refusal to give specific reasons for the denial of the visa represents a threat to civil liberties.
“It is of course too ludicrous for words that I, who have largely been responsible for the creation and development of one of the most prosperous branches of the pharmaceutical industry of the United States, should be excluded from a visit to that country for ‘security’ reasons, ” Dr. Chain wrote. “It is a very sorry sign of these affairs in which we find ourselves at present. “
Pointing out that he has “nothing whatever to hide, ” the Jewish scientist continued: “I cannot believe that any personal reasons can be involved unless someone has made some slanderous statement to the F. B. I. Over such possibilities we have no control.”
Dr. Chain, who is a British subject, shared the Nobel Prize with Sir Alexander Fleming and Sir Howard Walter Florey for the penicillin discovery in 1945. He has been director of the biochemistry department at the Instituto Superiore di Sanita, Rome, a research institute of the Italian government, since about 1947.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
