UCT ad vu P. S. BARROWS 385 Bellaire Road Del Mar, California 92014 October 18, 1965 Dr. Joshua Lederberg Stanford School of Medicine Palo Alto, California 9430) Dear Doctor Lederberg: You were most gracious to take time to advise me; and your letter of October 13 conforms so closely to the position expressed by such others as Messers. Frederick Osborn and Theodosius Dobzhansky that my remaining reservations can only be pre- sumptuous. Nonetheless, Dutch obstinacy insists upon airing them. (Or are such racially-weighted traits, like Negro athletic ascendancy, mere illusion?) Granted that irrational boasts of racial superiority brought Eugenics into poor repute and diverted attention from the far broader spectrum of individual vari- ance. Granted, too, that even individual comparisons are distorted by disparate enviroment. Yet to defer all action therefore, seems like withholding cancer treatment pending a total cure. Should reproduction be condoned among the insane or genetically defective? Should the advantages so apparent in selectively breeding horses be denied our own posterity? If so, the Houyhnhnms may yet take over. As you point out, only voluntary action is thinkable in a democracy--yet there's a trap in that adjective.