December 26, 1967

Mra. Marjorie Guthrie

Dr. Stanley Jaeger

Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease Inc.
200 West S7Tth Street, Suite 130k

New York, New York 10019

Dear Mrs. Guthrie and Dr. Jaeger:

Thank you for your letter of October 22. The lateness of my reply is no reflec-
tion of my interest, instead, I was abroad for some time in the interval and
this is the first chance I have had to catch up on my mail.

Quite reasonably, my rash prophecies about genetic intervention elicited questions
from a number of people especially interested in Huntington's chorea. ‘This led
me to read a little more deeply into the literature on this disease than I had
done before, and to be quite frank, I am astonished at the relatively little
research now going on on fundamental aspects of this disease! I have been able to
find only one paper that deals in any significant way with the biochemical aspects
of it, and this seems like a rather minor lead to a very big problem.

With your best intentions and hardest work, I do not think you could accumulate
the resources to support the research needed for a frontal attack against the
disease. To be effective, such research must be integrated into many other aspects
of medical investigation. This responsibility has been met by the federal govern-—
ment as the only possible way we can make significant progress. But federal sup-
port for medical research has been flagging in recent years.

The most effective way to deploy your energies and human concerns would be to
lobby your congressmen for more aggressive support for the National Institutes

of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health for research along the lines
I have indicated! Honest, individual letters to congressmen can have more impact
than any amount of fancier propaganda!

Our own research at Stanford is not explicitly directed at Huntington's disease.
We are, however, very much concerned with basic problems of joining genetic
material from different sources together with the DNA of bacteria and viruses, and
these techniques will have to be perfected to give substance to the specific pro-
posals mentioned in my article. We are indeed strapped for funds too, but I would

not want to come to you under any false pretences about the directness of our approac
to the disease in which you are most interested. And I would still suggest that you

put the weight of your efforts on Congress, so as to achieve the most leverage.

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Mrs. Marjorie Guthrie December 26, 1967
Dr. Stanley Jaeger Page 2

If after hearing all this you might still feel inclined to discuss some
financial support for our pen particular programs, I will be happy to have
the opportunity to send you more details. It would be difficult to over-
estimate how useful another ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year of sup-
plementary support could be for the whole research program of our department.
This is only a few percent of the total research budget here, but most of our
support comes from federal grants and these are often encumbered with a good
deal of frustrating red tape, so that I have to spend a disproportionate part
of my time in reacting to minor emergencies.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Gametics