December 11, 1973

Dr. Alfred
Rockefeller University
New York, New York 10021

Dear Alfred,

I was interested to get your letter of November 15th, and I hope
that I am not replying too tardily to be of use to you.

I am finding it a little diffieult to recreate the mood and the
context of that Ciba Symposium. Many of the points that were being
discussed rather hypothetically at that time have become trgently
advocated matters of policy -- e.g. the vicious ideas that Shockley
ia promulgating. Also I find that on many related issues now that
Francis Crick and I have diverged very considerably. I am not sure that
I can point to a great deal in that discussion on which I am eure that
I have changed my mind, but I suspect that the questions would be
interpreted rather differently today than they were at that time.

The most constructive thing to do is to send you some of my more
recent discussions of similar issues and leave it to you to relate them
to that conference. Basically I would say that as long as we are s0
divided culturally classwise and racially as we are in this country
today that the social benefit of hypothetical genetic programs that

become entangled with class etc., is outweighed by the enormous political
coste.

In discussing such policies as financial’ incentives for reproduction
I was thinking primarily of youngsters pursuing their higher education
but I realize that this idea is pretty much overtaken by the ZPG ideology
and the justifications for it. It sounds much more racist than anything
I had in mind at the time.

The context has changed so much that it can be very misleading to
read such material as if it were written today.

Have you seen the commentary by Provine in a recent issue of Seience?
It is rather superficial on the overall patterns of ideological influence

on scientific policy advice but it does bring out some interesting points
of caution.

Yours aincerely,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr

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