January 16, 1968

Missa Constance Foshay

Legislative Assistant to
Senator Mondale

Senate Office Building

Washington, D. C.

Dear Miss Foshay:

Thank you very much for sending me the material on Senator Mondale's
proposal for a national commission on health, science,research and develop-
ment. I am afraid I put you to a great deal of trouble with my redundant
request, but I was most anxious to see this material by not later than
Sunday morning and when an opportunity arose to send a messenger from the
NASA committee room, I did not hesitate to take advantage of it. I had

not counted on your having already responded with the mailing, but in any
came let me give you my sincere thanks.

The speciel delivery copy of the statement was waiting at my apartment
when I arrived home Saturday evening.

These materials were useful to me in preparing the column that will be
published in the Washington Post on Saturday, January 20. Unfortunately,
I do not have a clean copy of it here, but it will be available to you
soon enough in the newspaper.

Besides what I wrote in the column, I might add just a few statements of
further comment in response to the Senator's request for these. In his
statement there is an implied suggestion about “whose genes shell be altered,
and for what purposes" that may help to lend credence to the vague horror
that biochemiste are going to change the bodies of existing people. These
kinds of apprehensions have been rather widely kindled with the publicity
given to Kornberg's most recent accomplishments, and they are, to say the
least, most unfortunate. This phrase leaves the impression that the genes
of existing people are vulnerable to attack or alteration by a biochemist,
and this is not one of the technical prospects whose credibility is enoggh
to warrant spending much time on it. In my recent columns in the Washington
Post I have attempted to outline some of the actual possibilities of genetic
intervention, and we might conceivably add to this the opportunity to by-pass

VU!

Wapltdis:

Oy * 57

AYU
January 16, 1968
Page 2

the hazards of genetic recombination through the technique of nuclear
transplantation. This could lead to the propagation of offspring who

more Closely resembled the chosen parent, rather than being a combination
of the characters inherited from each of the two parents, as pertains to
sexual reproduction. There is no doubt that these prospects deserve care-
ful and thoughtful consideration, but I believe the issues are no more
profound than those that are involved in the guidance of the child's mind
through the process of education and the changing of people's minds through
the use of mass media. I do believe, then, that the whole tone of the
Senator's statement overdramatizes the biological situation when it deserves
to be treated on a par with the existing aspects of child rearing and the
socialization of individuals of the following generation. To carry this
line of argument further, I would propose that if there were to be a national
commission on ethical and social implications, it would not be painting a
fair picture unless it also dealt with these matters of educational inter-
vention in the emotional @development and social attitudes of the developing
citizen.

In sum, I think there might be an unfortunate misplaced emphasis on the more
lurid speculations about the use of genetic biochemistry, when we in fact do
have many very immediate problems on the scope of medicine and other inter-
ventions in the quality of human life. The simple question of the prolonga-

tion of life past productive middle age is one with so many ramifications that by
itself 1t woudd fully warrant the exercise of the talents of the kind of com-
mission that the Senator had in mind.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics