STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
STANFORD MEDICAL CENTER
300 PASTEUR DRIVE, PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA 94304

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS
Professor Joshua Lederberg

October 9, 1967

Dear Dr. Kass--

If I did not share your concerns, I would
hardly waste my time and effort ina weekly
column intended for a broadening of the frame
of political debate to include fundamental
issues of human biology. Within the format
of a weekly column, which appears recurrently,
there are limitations and opportnities quite
different from more scholarly journals. Were
I tom be excessively stressful, week after week,
I think I would quickly lose my readership.

As you will see (and I hope might have noted
from the past history of my column) I am very
much exercised about the confrontations for wise
and sober choice that lie ahead. I am particularly
concerned that we do not confuse rational choice

with acquiescence in familiar experience.

Why is biological intervention called 'tampering'
as it almost always is, and not education, good
nutrition and so on? I think mainly because it
is just less familiar. We ought to have a humane
interest in all these ways of tampering with
individual development:

Columns being what they are, it will take me
some few weeks to develop my ideas on this subject.
I hope you will be quite uninhibited about con-
tinuing the debate on substantive as well as stylis-
tic issues at that time. It is always gratifying
to know that someone is reading ‘out there'.

sincerelys—
Lr. Josepn P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES, SES ectiarn MEDICINE
ded:

icated to the study of mental retardation
Molecular Biology Heredity Neurobiology Developmental Medicine

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