August 22, 1973

Mr. Peter Steinfels
Editor
The Hastings Center Studies
Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences
623 Warburton Avenue
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 10706

Dear Sir,

In Mare Lappe's article, Vol. 1, Number 2, at page 65 I am quoted
as having asserted “the need to contain DNA lesions that are introduced
into the gene pool’.Such a formulation obfuscates the fact that these
lesions do not exist in vacuo but are in fact genetic aberrations carried
by human individuals." I can understand the temptation to create a
straw-man in order to give greater force to an argument, but this is
hardly an ethical way to deal with the propositions of one's colleagues.
Why did he not also quote other sentences from the same papef? "It is
so difficult to do only good in such matters that we are better off
putting our strongest efforts into the prevention of mutations, so as to
minimize the heavy moral and other burdens of decision once the gene
pool has been seeded with them." In making such narrow attributions,
Dr. Lappe is arrogating to himself a unique sensitivity to the complexity
of the problems of human genetics that is in fact shared by most of his
colleagues. Certainly there is nothing in my article that would support
the implied suggestion of quarantining or otherwise reproductively isolating
those individuals carrying DNA lesions. The main thrust of my article and
much of my other recent writing on this subject has been to stress that it
is the alleviation of individual distress that mist be the focus of our
concerns in this field.

I am enclosing a copy of this piece, which I can readily make available
to you for reprinting if you wish to give your readers the opportunity of
a more peecise rendition of my views.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr
Enclosure