February 16, 1965

Dr. R. L. Teplitz
Cytogenetics Division
Department of Pathology
City of Hope Medical Center
Duarte, California

Dear Dr. Teplitz:

I fully concur with the concerns you expressed in your letter, and especially
about opening up the problems of biological manipulation to a public forum.
While I fully intend to accept what I see as my own personal responsibilities
in the academic sphere, I am much more dubious about being able to carry much
persuasion or interest to the general public. However, I have had some brief
correspondence with Arne Tiselius about a magazine that might approximate the
needs you indicated and 1 expect to hear some more from him about that. I
heard some rumors that some of the staff of Seience magazine were contemplating
setting up another journal oriented more sharply to science and social questions,
and there might be some advantage in pushing this approach rather than trying
to obtain a special outlet for solely biological questions. As to your main
point, however, I have concluded that I could best eperate myself in a somewhat
rarefied academic atmosphere and hope that the burden of a more popular exposi-
tion might be shared with those who had appropriate talent for it. It really
does take an Aldous Huxley or a Vercors to carry across the message,

I foresee one special difficulty, namely achieving an adequate comprehension

of the significance of mechanistic biology. It is especially disturbing to me

that this idea is not simply rejected by many lay people, but that it is relatively

unfamiliar to them. Not having thought about it, their almost instantaneous
reaction to discussions of euphenics is often one of revulsion or accusations
of demonism. One then has to go to a fairly fundamental, and therefore rather
difficult, statement of ethical and religious principles to get beyond this
barrier, and this is no negligible task.

Starting a new journal sounds like a rather ambitious and demanding project,
although I would be glad to encourage anyone who felt he had the energy to put
through. I have been considering writing a series of essays, both as possible
serfal contributions to the New Scientist (them mainly because they asked me),
and perhaps for ultimate collection and publication as a book. Nowever, while
I've had some of these roughed out, I do not seem easily to find the time to

yg / zy rd a
Dr. R. L. Teplitz 2 February 16, 1965

polish them in the way they deserve to be before exposing them in this form.
I would be interested in any specific comments that you might have on the
enclosures and whether there are some more useful outlets that may occur to
you that might be available for essentially the same kinds of statement.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg,
Professor of Genetics