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143b  The Issue of 'Bad Heredity'
      Stanford M.D.  October 1966  Series 5, Number 2

     In the last issue of Stanford M.D. you reprinted an interview
with Dr. William Shockley which appeared originally in U.S. News
and World Report.  This kind of pseudo-scientific justification
for class and race prejudice is so hackneyed that we would not
ordinarily have cared to react to it.  However, Professor Shockley's
standing as a Nobel Laureate and as a colleague at Stanford, and
now the appearance of his article with a label of Stanford medicine,
creates a situation where our silence could leave the false impression
that we share or even acquiesce in his outlook, which we certainly do
not.

     Professor Shockley has made some constructive suggestions -- the
essentiality of more research on genetic factors in social
maladjustment, and certainly the need for more creative imagination
than we now observe in planning social welfare and in education.
However, we deplore his innuendos about the hereditary basis of the
purported intellectual and social deficits of Negroes, and the tone
of his entire discussion about "bad heredity".  Why did he not trot
out the "scientific documentation" of the Jukes and the Kallikaks?
Whatever good might come from his constructive suggestions is
outweighed by the mischief of a pseudo-scientific basis for evading
or distorting our social responsibilities; too many people will seize
any excuse for these purposes.  The plain fact is that we do not know
the answers to his provocative questions, and in our present-day
context it falls between mischief and malice to make such a
prejudgment in his terms.

     There is also a common fallacy about genetic defect -- that it is
fundamentally irremediable.  The whole concept of "bad heredity" is in
any case a myopic one, since the high values of one social milieu are
the vices of another one, and our milieu is constantly changing.
The quantitative importance of hereditary variation for our social
problems is, we repeat, quite unknown, or will it be as easy as
Professor Shockley implies to find out.  As long as any racial
prejudice or prejudgment lingers, would a Negro child adopted into a
white family have the same effective environment as a white baby?
Howbeit we can be sure of two things: (1) that under any circumstances
the rate of genetic change of the population is very slow compared
to the changes in our social institutions, and (2) even if we adopted
a totalitarian answer on Shockley's premises, there would be plenty
of residual variability to contend with.  In these circumstances
we can hardly neglect another prescription that Shockley overlooks --
to work out the techniques of medical care, education and industrial
and economic organization that can create incentives and useful
careers for the whole wonderful variety of human beings.

                 The Faculty of the Department of Genetics
                 Walter F. Bodmer
                 A. T. Ganesan
                 L. A. Herzenberg
                 Joshua Lederberg (Executive Head)
                 Elliott C. Levinthal
                 Eric M. Shooter
                 Silvio Varon
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