Memo from To: Ro Edwards <
JOSHUA LEDERBERG DJ Sharpe

sun 7 37

a

Your paper in Nature 5/14/71

Your reference (18) was quite puzzling;
perhaps merely a typographical scramble. I
would be interested to know just what you had
én mind.

I also enclose some of my authentic writings
on "cloning"; and I would be pleased to ex-
change reprints and further notes with you.

Your statement is much more clearsighted
than a great deal of recent discussion. I guess
I still mistrust formal bodies (absent a tradi
tional constitution) about confining themselves
to their assigned mission -- and especially
when there are no large ecale pragmatic problems
at hand. (Bpeculation may lead to mischief.)

The disposition of organs post-mortem would
seem to me to qualify, more assuredly, by this
criterion than isolated experiments on human
reproduction (which, I believe, have no chamce
at all to become runaways as Watson pictures.)
We have no grievous evidence, after all, that
a technique like prenatal sexing and selective
abortion by sex, which ought to be as troublese
some as anything else on the agenda, is giving
any trouble worth legislataive attention; and
if it should, there is ample time to invoke the
necessary remedies.

I know you will say that the public perception
is the crucial problem. But perhaps this is
itself responsive to the confusion thrust at

the public by scientists, even those who quite
moderately cail for commisions. And, contra

your expectations, these RwEn may generate a

will to survive ind epen- PROFESSOR JOSHUA LEDERBERG
. Department of Genetics
dent of the social need. School of Medicine

Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305

 

 

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