se STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
Ey STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305

 

March 21, 1975

STANFORD UNIveErRsiTy SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Department of Genetics
(415) 497-5052

Mr. Robert Waldinger
61 Columbia Street
Brookline, Massachusetts 02146

Dear Bob, -
I was very glad to get your paper on Perspectives on Nazi R@ecisn.

I do not know if there are other formalities that need to be fulfilled
in order to express my assessment of your work, However, I hope that you can
use the attached note to give you the appropriate grade.

Your paper is a curious mixture of passion and analysis, which I think
you took pains to describe yourself,

Perhaps my main stylistic suggestion would be to turn it around and
offer in the first part of such a production the best that you can do
by way of a descriptive and analytical account, and tehn provide your own
personal interpretations in the second part. This is a fiarly small point
and while I might still have room to offer some criticism along these lines,
I think your paper so far outdoes most of the other commentary on that kind
of history that it may be something of a landmark!

I am still somewhat amazed about the way in which Haldane, Huxley and
Dobzhansky come through to you as you read their written works. Of course
I have my own biases, in part because of my personal knowledge of these
people and they surely did communicate much more to me through those
contacts than may be evident in their writings, That is not a unique problem
in this kind of historical interpretation and I would have to go back and
read with great care what they actually wrote in order to dissect that from
the other sources of my impressions,

You do have quite a thing about "eugenics", and I think you should be
careful about using that as a stereotype-in-reverse. I think if you were to
read more of Haldane's works, and perhaps also his biography (by Clark),
you might be able to get a broader perspective on what was happening. There
was. certainly no more humanly oriented person with respect to his social
objectives than J.B.S, Haldane. He was criticized far more for having been
a life-long member of the Communist Party - although he had some trouble
stomaching the Lysenkoist episode - than for any identification with racist—
eugenics views! Although Huxley and especially Dobzhansky are on the other
side of the political spectrum, I think their anxieties about the misuse of
genetic terminology for racist purposes somehow has not gotten through in
the material that you have read and cited to the extent that I know they

~2.

LT. J. ¥. KENNEDY, JR. LARORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE
Mr. Robert Waldinger -2- 3/21/75

were deeply committed to.

You seem to be mainly concerned that geneticists had nothing stronger
to offer than anabstraction/ or an assertion about agnosticism about racial
difference. Unfortunately. that is exactly the limit of what scientific
information has to offer. Would you wish them to have made contra-factual
statements,about which they happen to have more expert knowledge than many
people who dabble in this field, to comply with their humanistic biases?

About your analysis as to which groups felt beholden to speak out about
Nazi racism, I would not wish to diminish what you said about the threat to
the credibility of the scientific fields of anthropology and of genetics
respectively. Certainly a scientist who feels that his own scientific arena
is being perverted is going to sense, understand and respond to the outrage
the sooner. But in addition I think you should not overlook the sense of
responsibility that is a slightly different version of that theme. The
anthropologist is expected to have a point of view about scientific
knowledge of the difference among races; he would not be in the field if
he Were not interested in such problems; and besides the sense of threat to
his field, I think that the members of these groups felt that they had a
special right and obligation to speak out on these problems as part of their
role in society. The geneticists were less vocal in print precisely for the
reason that you indicated:that there was not that much that could be
authoritatively stated by a student of Drosophila genetics that would bear
on these questions - not only did he feel perhaps slightly less threatened:
but he also may have felt that he was slightly less qualified to speak with

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“the ring of scientific authority” although certainly more so than other

scientific fields. I think you should recall that scientists in general were
more inclined to stay in their Ivory Tower in those days than is true at the
present time - the politicization of scientific activity is in large measure
an outcome of the public role of science, and of public support for it, that
accompanied the many involvements of science,with government and with politics
during and since World War II (the atomic bomb is of course th2 most outstanding
but by no means the only one).,I would have been particularly interested to
see a more systematic outline of what different textbooks of sanetics said

in the 20's and 30's,and while this is in your paperm it is sc newhat scattered
and I think there are a number of titles that were left out pcrhaps because
they were not readily available.

I wonder if you did make any kind of systematic table about the manner
and extent to which problems of race in man were discussed in various texts
of genetics. I was particularly curious about the books by Sinnott and Dunn —
a standard genetic textbook that went through many, many editions, eventually
to be joined by Dobzhansky in co-authorship - and it might be «specially
revealing to trace how different editions handle the problem.

I have made some notes about particular pages of your manuscript, so I
may be jumping back and forth now.
Mr. Robert Waldinger -3- 3/21/75

Your remark on page 24 about Haldane dodging "rotten eggs". is about -
the ue inappropriate thing that I can imagine in the light of his actual
history / X do commend you to his biography, and perhaps also the partial
autobiography written by his first wife, Rose Haldane, called "The Truth
Will Out", If you will see the way in which he was involved in the Spanish
Civil War, I think you might have second thoughts about ceoatributing
“dodging rotten eggs" to this particular person! I think the regret that
you quoted was a perfectly honest and factual one, that he wished it were
possible for science to be even more directly applicable to the amelioration
of human problems. You might wish to keep in mind that the Soviet communist
ideology on this particular question went through quite a number of ‘vacillations
and that there was a considerable interval during the 20's when the Marxists
had rather tangible hopes about being able to apply eugenic approaches as
part of the socialist system. The best source for this is Medvedev'’s book
"The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko" published a few years ago by Doubleday.

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I am not sure what criterium you are using in asking for "compelling
scientific reasons for continuing the XYY study” - I would certainly want

to dissociate that issue, from the one of whether or not it is being

conducted in an ethical manner sensitive to the rights and interests of the
subjects. I guess it depends on whether you believe there is a scientific.

(and by that I mean ultimately a human) purpose in achieving a deeper under-
standing of the actual relationships between genotype and behavior. The fact
is the XYY syndrome - as feeble a case as that is ~ is almost the only one
where one can identify a clearcut genetic basis to behavioral difference in
man. From my view I should think it would be very important to want to know

a great deal more about that,not because I fantasy using genetic remedies

for such situations, but rather that if we can understand better the ultimate
underlying roots of differential behavioral development, we may have ways

of minimizing serious problems that arise in many other non-genetic contexts.
All other studies on behavioral genetics in man ~ until someone can identify
some specific single gene segregations -— must rely upon the feeblest of
methodologies: things like twin studies, family correlations and so on which
are absolutely inadequate to the task. Would you think it important to study,
from a scientific standpoint, the developmental consequences of the XO karyotype?
If we were to adhere to the principle that the study of human behavior is
itself a’no no, I am afraid we will be left with nothing better than the
unsupportable speculations of the Freudian analysts and their ilk in trying to
find solutions to some of our major health problems. I do think geneticists
have not very well gotten across - or perhaps many of them do not very well
understand ~ the difference between the analysis of a genetic syndrome, and

the forecasting of the specific therapeutic measures that would be involved

in treatment and in prevention, If one were to discuss the study of the genetics

rae —

I am interested in the course that you are involved in and if you
develop any written materials in that connection I would be very grateful
to you indeed for them. I am sure that you are aware of the very deep cleavage
that started quite early during the development of the discipline of genetics
in the United States between the eugenicistd and others who were rash enough
to think that genetics could be applied to human problems) and the experimentalists
who fled from that arena, Paradoxically it was the more socially minded members
of the discipline - just exactly people like H.J. Muller - who struggled to
find ways in which genetics could be of some useful benefit in human affairs
Mr. Robert Waldinger -4- 3/21/75

and unfortunately did not have any better scientific base to come up with

than eugenics by "rational germinal choice” (which as futile as it may
be at least lacks the moe vicious elements of involuntary sterilization and
that bag.)

I do not think there is much history on American protest about Soviet
oppression of Jews: it is rather more a matter of current events. But I do
commend it to you as an example where you might find it very difficult to
document the feelings of a great many people who have not come out in any
organized statements on this question. In-fact; I think there has been some
National Academy of Sciences involvement in it, but in fact I think that may
be the other way. If I am not mistaken, the President of the Academy, Phil
Handler, made some very strong personal statements on this matter and that he
has been criticized for unduly involving the Academy without having completely
consulted its membership! One of the issues here is not merely the racist angle
but the extent to which we should encourage scientific involvement in things
like international congresses in the Soviet Union,which imply a freedom of
travel, thought, and communication,when the Soviet governmentis actively
persecuting many of its own scientists and will not permit them to attend these
congresses in their own country,

Let me repeat again that I have gone on in some length about your writing
and this is a token of esteem not of criticism.

seve yours,
j
sosntd ebony

po of Genetics

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