Aare

STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 « (415) 321-1200

 

 

STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Depariment of Genetics
Professor Joshua Lederberg

Dear Sarge

I was quite perturbed to see the NY Times story on
your brother-in-law Senator Ted Kennedy's blast at
Dr Joan Hodgman's cliniaal experimental work on chloram-
phenicol at UCLA. And my colleagues share the view
that this was unin’ formed shooting from the hip.

Even if there were some substance to the imputation cf
misconduct, there is something very close to McCarthyism
in this style of ventilation of accusations -~ of public
pronouncement without a hearing, or even a well defined
bill of particulars. Dr. Hodgman will be able to defend
herself, but not without having to face a lingering
residue of suspicion and confusicn. In the long run,
the Senator is bound to be polarized hy having to defend
positions to which he had prematurely committed himself;
his own credibility will be impaired -- unless he goes
on to an escalating vendetta against medical research;
and the kind of clinical study that is the.. only.way
we will know the relative merits of different treatments
will be seriously frustrated. Of course the moral bur-
den of thousands of lives unsaved for lack of such
knowledge can never be fixed to the same political ad-
vantage as the unforeseeable risks of those who received
an inferior treatment (as known by hindsight!). There
will be plenty of black babies among the unsaved too.

. Ido not brush aside the problem of how to do ‘experi-
ments! without explotting people. In this case, the
‘experiment! was a controlled observation of a set of
treatments, each of which had a reasonable rationale.
The risk of chloramphenicol fatalities in adults is
yknown to be about 1/30000 cases treated, and this is

a good bargain if the drug were as good a potential

life-saver as appeared before the study.
Lr. Joseru P. KenNeoy, Jr. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE
dedicated to the study of mental retardation

Molecular Biology Heredity Neurobiology Developmental Medicine