4758 Edgeware Rd.
San Diego, California 92116
July 7, 1964

JUL 8 1964

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Stanford University Medical School
Stanford, California

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

Last week I mailed you a copy of my book Infantile Autism: The syndrome and
its implication for a theory of behavior. Quite frankly, I sent you this
book in the hope of enticing you into becoming interested in autism and some
of the other biological puzzles I discuss in the book (i.e., the paradoxes
associated with the first-born, pages 124-127, 140-144),

I read several years ago about your Kennedy Foundation grant relating to the
molecular biology of mental retardation. I will be,comi to Palo Alto for
a year, starting in September, as a Fellow at the GEES for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences. During our stay in Palo Alto I will want
to try to get a cytogenic study done on my eight-year old son, who is af-
flicted with infantile autism. There is no one in San Diego who can do the
work, and the Los Angeles specialists on this problem are too backlogged to
accept more cases. Though I'd intended for some time to try to get the
analysis done while at Palo Alto, I've received a new stimulus in that
another parent has recently contacted me with the information that a cyto-
genic study has identified an abnormality in his autistic child's chromo-
somes, At least, it looks that way. The work is being checked.

I might add that you have very indirectly entered the problem of autisn
already. As you know, you were one of the "top American scientists"
described by Bello in his 1954 Fortune article. It was that article that
struck me with the demographic similarity between genius and infantile
autism: the first-born male Jew is strikingly overrepresented among both
the world's top scientists (Einstein, Freud, Weiner, etc.) and in children
with autism. This is discussed in the book.

I will contact your office when I get to Palo Alto to seek guidance to
where I can get the cytogenic work done. Meanwhile, if you can find time
to read the book and wish to send me any ideas, I'd naturally be delighted
to hear from you.

Singerely

   
 

ernard Rimland, Ph.D.

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