JUL 2 1969

HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL ~<@ MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL

Please reply to
DEPARTMENT OF ANAESTHESIA

Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, Massachusetts 02114

HENRY K. BEECHER, M.D.
Dorr Professor of Research in Anaesthesia

 

July 1, 1969

Professor J. Lederberg
Genetics Department
Stanford University
Stanford, California

Dear Professor Lederberg:

I am enclosing herewith the reprints you asked for, I have read
with great interest your editorial on "Informed Guinea Pigs" (I had not *
seen it before), and I can say the same thing about the extracts you sent
me from the "Annals of Internal Medicine."

I suppose you saw my recent article in "Science," where I ex=
pressed ideas so similar to your own. I am sure I should have been aware
of what you had to say, but the fact is I did not. In any case, I am glad
to see that we agree on the necessity for protecting the investigators and
their human subjects.

I know that you are quite familiar with this hospital and its
Committee on Research, What you don't know is the trouble I have had trying
to get the ideas expressed in the "Science" article accepted in this in~
stitution. This is not in terms of active rejection but, worse, in terms
of acute boredom when I have brought up the subject repeatedly. I do not
think for one minute that the acturarial side of this problem is over-
whelming. It is not more overwhelming than certain labor legislation
already on the books, and successful,

I hope you will be interested in looking over my book, RESEARCH
AND THE INDIVIDUAL. This is in press at Little, Brown, and I am now wait-
ing for the page proof so that the time of its emergence should not be too
far away.

I have no sense of infallibility and I would be very glad if you
would take the trouble to let me know when you disagree with the things I
have said in the enclosed reprints.

Very sincerely,

. >
. ev, ‘
Ibn Co at Ne

Henry K. Beecher, M.D.

See aA, tay?