April 14, 1970

The Hon. Gordon Allott
United States Senator
Senate Office Building
Washington, D. C.

Dear Senator Allott:
Thank you for your letter of April 9.

You were kind enough to express your integest in my views on "the likely
contours of our emerging society" and "the sort of policy questions we in
Washington...should be--facing"™.

The main vehicle that, fortunately, has been available to me for this purpose
is a column that appears weekly in The Washington Post, and I will be glad to
send a few sets from time to time that appear to correspond to the interest
you express. In addition, I am preparing a paper for a forthcoming meeting
of the American Psychiatric Association that I hope may deal more comprehen-
sively with such issues, and I will be pleased to take the opportunity to send
you a copy when it is drafted.

I must say that you set we a difficult standard by your own addresses that I

have been reading with very great interest in the Congressional Record during

the last few weeks.

What I am going to try to do in my A.P.A. article is take up the question of
“technological injury" from a non-polemical standpoint, keeping in mind that

new knowledge and techniques are being introduced at a very rapid pace into

a real, not our ideal, society. It is only fairly recently that I have looked

at the question in just this way, having apent most of my life in the most

urgent advocacy of knowledge for its own sake. It is perhaps the grave potential
for abuse of my own contributions to the fundamental biology of microorganiams
that has given me some pause in this matter. Most of the problems that I perceive
in the abuse of technological advance still seem to me to follow from too little,
rather than too much, knowledge and understanding.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

‘(NAS

(VQ yo-4

L+LoTly