UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
MEDICAL SCHOOL
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

TELEPHONE:
DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN GENETICS ANN ARBOR, NORMANDY 3-1511

1133 E. CATHERINE STREET EXTENSION 2176

Dear Esther and Josh,

Nez has had a good time composing letters to you and I have just finished
typing the "personal" letter for him, Thought I would add a note about my own
setup. But first let me congratulate you on your"prom.tion" to a more stimu-
lating research-oriented center, Especiaily with Kornberg, you wiil prebably
make gigantic strides whiehI cannot even envision,

Shortly after I settled here in July, Neel left for Japan on a two-year
consanguinity study. He will return in March, but in the meantime I am not
being driven into mutation rate studies, and other large-scale nrojects, and
can spend my time reading and trying to catch up with the field which has left
me hopelessly behing for 5 years while I learned such things as how to diagnose
a nlacenta previa and never to sit on a patient's bed,

Schull and I are giving the 10-lecture course to the sonhomcre med students,
(The course will be exnanded to 30 lectures, beginning next year.) We are
weaving genetic concepts into a sy¥thesized story of the red blood cell, hoving
that by the end of the course they will have a few ideas about the trends in
modern research and a realization of the inadequacies of descriptive medicine.
I have covered the tynes of inheritance patterns, penetrance, and linkage in
describing abnormalities of size and shane of REC (elliptocytosis, spherocytosis,
Fanconi's anemia, and sex-linked anemia), Next will be abnormalities of hemo-
globin synthesis (sickle-cell, C, and methemoglobinemia), then surface antigens
(exposing them to a little ponulation genetics) and intracellular enzyre defects
(nrimaguine sensitivity). This was Schull's idea and I found it a little diffi-
cult to organize my lectures around someone else's idea, but am in favor of
trying to limit our material instead of throwing THE BOCK at them as Neel has
done in the past. From the three classes imxkke who have been given a medical
genetics course, the comments have, in general been negative,

Will you be giving @ course in human genetics to Stanford med students or
will they get a course from someone? What is the orientation of the course and
the content? And how many hours? :

I think your idea of leaving the genetic counseling and service up to the
various departments with men who are geneticaily oriented is a good one if there
were such men available. So far I have been unable to find such creatures at
University Hospital with the notable exception of Falls in Ophthalmology. In
the meantime, I carry out the "service" and answer the in-patient ‘refers and most
of the out-patient refers while Neel is away. This consumes about 1/4 of my time.

Wish we could get together. Corresnondence is so inadequate. Can't you two
fly over to Ann Arbor some weekend or for Thanksgiving? You are more mobile than
we are since we work in different places and would have to get a baby-sitter,
(Barbara just had her tenth birthday and is thinking of dong some baby-sitting
herself). If you are tied down and we could get away when would it be convenient?

Sincerely,

meee