“PR 2 0 tap

ROBERT SARGENT SHRIVER, JR.

April 23, 1973

Professor Joshua Lederberg

Director

Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Laboratories for
Molecular Medicine

Stanford University Medical Center
Stanford, California 94305

Dear Josh:

My wife, Eunice, showed me a copy of your letter of April 16. I think
she will be responding to you as soon as she gets the chance. In the mean-
while, however, I thought I would inject my own two cents' worth.

Prankly, I don't think you and she have much of a difference of opinion.
She is not opposed to the use of fetal tissues in a fashion similar to the
current use of tissues from autoposies on adults or children, and she would
not oppose, I believe, biopsies using fetal tissues assuming the fetus is dead.
Her objections are focussed on the use of lwe fetuses for experimental pur-
poses. Some experimentors are not only conducting live fetus experiments
during the short time after an abortion when a fetus may still be alive
naturally, but they are prolonging the life of the fetus for extended periods
of hours and even days in order to facilitate more extended experimentation.
Eunice is objecting to that type of "science".

Eunice is outraged that we know so little about the biology of the fetus
and of pregnancy that some 800,000 fertilized eggs are lost every year in this
country by natural failures during pregnancy. That is one of the reasons why
the Kennedy Foundation created the Kennedy Institute on Human Reproduction
at Georgetown University Medical School. That is also one of the reasons
we have always been so pleased that the Kennedy Laboratories for Molecular
Medicine under your direction have been focussed on "developmental medicine"
for so many years. We have hoped that you, Eric Shooter, Guy McKhann and
others would discover significant new knowledge in neurology and developmental
medicine. We have always hoped that you would make this an arena of your
own research,
ROBERT SARGENT SHRIVER, JR.

Professor Joshua Lederberg
Page 2
April 23, 1973

Like you, we don't regard bioethical questions as being simple and we
share your belief that moral problems, if not dilemmas, "attend every course
of action that might be advocated". That is why we incorporated Bioethics
into the framework of research pursued at the Kennedy Institute at Georgetown.
And because of your personal interest in these questions and your immense
scientific knowledge and dedication, we were pleased you accepted appointment
to the Board of Advisors to the Kennedy Institute at Georgetown. So, once
again, I don't think you and Eunice have much difference of opinion on this
question of experimentation on life fetuses. She thinks that's "human
experimentation". Some people don't. Maybe you do. Maybe you don't.

But from your letter it would appear that you do believe that fetal tissue
is different from other tissues- otherwise you wouldn't be advocating only
"cautious and compassionate use of fetal tissues." I don't think we have
to be terribly cautious and compassionate in our use of other organs after
they have been extracted from the human body.

I enclose a letter on this subject which Eunice wrote to the Washington
Post a few days ago. Her manner of expression is considerably more passionate
than mine would have been; but if you can pass over the rhetoric, I think you
will find that she expresses some important ideas and also evidences sensi-
tivity to the complicated questions and moral problems.

Just one final note: -- you will be pleased I hope to learn that the
scientific as well as ethics faculty at The Kennedy Institute at Georgetown

have been expanding almost like Xerox. I enclose on separate ait Ba
current faculty summary which shows the scope of the BSS 6, eget

Sincerely,

VVar
gént Shriver