John Harrington, age y, of Spokane, Washington for his question:

Can a person chaff his finperprints?

The answer to this is bad news for Two Gun Pete, Billy  theShiv and all the other no good thugs. But it is good news for all the people who like peace and quiet without robbers and bloodshed. For   there just isn't anything a person can do to change his fingerprints.

He can shave off the skin of his fingertips. He can even burn it off. But when the wounds heal, those little hoops and whorls which make a fingerprint will grow right back in, exactly   just exactly  as they were before.

Each person is born with a set of fingerprints all his own. They are his individual property and can never be mistaken for anyone else's. And they stay this way through every day of his life and there isn't a thing he can do about it. Most of us are glad that this is so.