STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
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STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Department of Genetics January 92 > 1969

Dr. Orville G. Brim, Jr.
Russell Sage Foundation
230 Park Avenue

New York, New York 10017

Dear Bert:

As you know, I have been deeply interested for a long time in how we can
manage to assimilate the biological revolution. I find that I am spending
an increasing part of my own time in reading, thinking, and writing about
this matter. Up until now I have have managed to evade the question of
specific funding for this line of work, but it is coming increasingly dif-
ficult to cover it under the aegis of the kinds of specific research grants
available to me. Furthermore, the very stringent retrenchment that we have
been suffering the last year or two compounds the problem.

I do not have what I would regard as a well-focussed research program by
the standards of my laboratory work. Nevertheless, I think I can make a
useful contribution in this area, and to do so needs a modicum of support.
What I have in mind would be an annual outlay to cover half the salary of
an information assistant/secretary, which will come to $4,000 per year, and
another $2,000 for books, journals, a little computer time for retrieval
programs, and miscellaneous expenses. So I am in effect writing this as a
brief application to the Russell Sage Foundation for a grant in support of
"Studies on the Impact of New Biological Science” in the amount of $6,000
per year for a period of three years.

This work, of course, overlap some of the responsibilities that I might under-
take for Milton Katz's committee, but I am thinking more and more seriously
that I can pursue my thoughts on this subject better if done independently,

or at least within the framework of a group of my colleagues informally assen-
bled in the Stanford area rather than on a national committee. I also serve
on a number of other bodies, and in my teaching likewise make considerable
use of the kind of information that I need this help to assemble and digest.

The weekly column that I write for the Washington Post often touches on these
problems and imposes a kind of discipline to keep in regular continuous touch
with them. I propose to write much more comprehensively about these same
themes from time to time, and will of course acknowledge the support of the
Foundation in such publications where appropriate.

LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE

Wwiyg
Dr. Orville G. Brim, Jr. January 22, 1969
Page 2

This request is from one point of view an annoying "nickle and dime" matter,
but it is no less embarrassing to have no specific support for it, which is
what I write to you for at the present time.

I am becoming more and more convinced that the most effective approach to
coping with the revolution is nothing more nor less than a reaffirmation of

the rights of individual freedom and dignity that already underlie our national
culture. New biological advances stress the need to reaffirm such rights, and
to preserve our traditions of due process when social and individual interests
come into conflict. The latter is the larger issue imposed on us by the grow-
ing complexity of modern life and indeed, the very extension of human rights

to large numbers of people, quite apart from biological progress.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics