Fox Experiment, the

Amino acids release water molecules as they combine chemically to form proteins. According to this behavior, known as the Le Chatelier’s principle, it is not possible for a reaction that gives off water (a so-called condensation reaction) to take place in an environment containing water. (See Le Chatelier’s Principle, the.) Therefore, the oceans—where evolutionists say that life began—are definitely unlikely, unsuitable places for amino acids to combine and produce proteins.

Given this “water problem” that so demolished all their theories, evolutionists began to construct new scenarios. Sydney Fox, the best-known of these researchers, came up with an interesting theory to resolve the difficulty. He theorized that immediately after the first amino acids had formed in the primitive ocean, they must have been splashed onto the rocks by the side of a volcano. The water in the mixture containing the amino acids must then have evaporated due to the high temperature in the rocks. In this way, amino acids could have distilled and combined—to give rise to proteins.

But his complicated account pleased nobody. Amino acids could not have exhibited a resistance to heat of the kind that Fox proposed. Research clearly showed that amino acids were destroyed at higher temperatures. Even so, Fox refused to abandon his claim.

He combined purified amino acids by heating them in a dry environment in the laboratory under very special conditions. The amino acids were duly combined, but he still obtained no proteins. . What he did obtain were simple, disordered amino-acid sequences, bound to one another in a random manner, that were far from resembling the proteins of any living thing. Moreover, had Fox kept the amino acids at the same temperature, the useless links that did emerge would have immediately broken down again.183

Another point that makes his experiment meaningless is that Fox used pure amino acids from living organisms, rather than those obtained in the Miller Experiment. In fact, however, the experiment, claimed to be an extension of the Miller Experiment, should have continued from the conclusion of that experiment. Yet neither Fox nor any other researcher used the useless amino acids that Miller produced.184

This experiment of Fox’s was not received all that positively by evolutionist circles because it was obvious that the amino acid chains (proteinoids) he obtained were not only meaningless, but could not have emerged under natural conditions. In addition, proteins—the building blocks of life—had still not been obtained. The problem of proteins had still not been solved.

An article published in Chemical Engineering News, a science magazine in the 1970s, said this about the experiment conducted by Fox:

 Sydney Fox and the other researchers managed to unite the amino acids in the shape of “proteinoids” by using very special heating techniques under conditions which in fact did not exist at all in the primordial stages of Earth. Also, they are not at all similar to the very regular proteins present in living things. They are nothing but useless, irregular chemical stains. It was explained that even if such molecules had formed in the early ages, they would definitely be destroyed.185

The proteinoids that Fox obtained were certainly far from being true proteins in terms of structure and function. There were as different from proteins as a complex technological device is from a heap of scrap metal.

Furthermore, these irregular collections of amino acids had no chance of surviving in the primitive atmosphere. Under the conditions of that time, destructive chemical and physical effects produced by the intense ultraviolet rays reaching the Earth and by uncontrolled natural conditions would have broken down these proteinoids and made it impossible for them to survive. Because of the Le Chatelier’s principle, there can be no question of these amino acids being underwater where ultraviolet rays could not reach them. In the light of all these facts, the idea that proteinoid molecules represented the beginning of life increasingly lost all credibility among scientists.

183 Richard B. Bliss and Gary E. Parker, Origin of Life, California, 1979, p. 25.
184 Ibid.185 S. W. Fox, K. Harada, G. Kramptiz, G. Mueller, “Chemical Origin of Cells,” Chemical Engineering News, June 22, 1970, p. 80.