THE ISSUE OF “BAD HEREDITY”
HON. CHARLES S. GUBSER

OF CALIFORNIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, December 18, 1969

Mr. GUBSER. Mr. Speaker, In recent
months I have placed in the Concres-
SIONAL Record material furnished me by
Dr. William Shockley and Dr. Joshua
Lederberg, boWPSEsin ford University,
relative to the question of whether the
National Academy of Sciences should
conduct a scientific study of the heredi-
tary aspects of our national human qual-
ity problems. I have done this tn the in-
terest of objectivity, and in no case have
I taken a position with respect to the ts-
sues involved.

Dr. Shockley has now presented addi-
tional material for the Recorp, and it is
inserted herewith: ;

{From the Stanford M.D., October 1968]

THs Issug or “Bap Heerorrr”

In the last Issue of Stanford M.D. you re~
printed an interview with Dr. William Shock-
ley which appeared originally in U.S. News
and World Report. This kind of pseudo-
scientific Justification for class and race prej-
udice is so hackneyed that we would not
ordinarily have cared to react to it. However,
Professor Shockley’s standing as a Nobel
Laureate and as a colleague at Stanford, and
now the appearance of his article with a label
of Stanford medicine, creates a situation
where our silence could leave the false tm-
pression that we share or even acquiesce in
his outlook, which we certainly do not.

Professor Shockley has made some con-
structive suggestions—the essentiality of
more research on genetic factors in social
matsdjustment, and certainly the need for
more creative imagination than we now ob-
serve in planning social welfare and tn edu-
cation. However, we deplore his innuendos
about the hereditary basis of the purported
intellectual and social deficits of Negroes,
and the tone of his entire discussion about
“pad heredity.” Why did he not trot out the
“scientific documentation” of the Jukes and
the Kallikaks? Whatever good might come
from his constructive suggestions is out-
weighed by the mischtef of a pseudo-scien-
tific basis for evading or distoring our soctal

— December 20, 1969 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Rem:

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reaponsibilitfes; too many people will seize
any excuse for these purposes. The plain fact
is that we do not know the answers to his
provocative questions, and in our present-
day context it falls between mischief and
malice to make such A prejudgment in his
terms. ~
There is also a common fallacy about
genetic defect—that it is fundamentally ir-
remediable. The whole concept of “bad
heredity” is in any cabe a myopic one, since
the high values of one social milieu are the
vices of another one, and our milieu ts con-
stantiy changing. The quantitative impor-
tance of hereditary variation for our social
problems is, we repeat, quite unknown, nor
Will tt be as easy as Professor Shockley im-
piles to find out. As long as any ractal preju-
dice or prejudgment Iingers, would a Negro
child adopted into a white family have the
sare effective environment as a white baby?
Howbelt we can be eure of two things: (1)
that under any circumstances the rate of
@enevio change of the population is very
siow compared to the changes in our social
institutions, and (2) even tf we adopted a
totalitarian enswer on Shockley’s premises,
there would be plenty of residual variability
to contend with. In these circumstances we
can hardly neglect another prescription that
hockley overlooks—to work out the tech-
niques of medical care, education and tndus-
trial and economic organization that can
create incentives and useful carcess for the
whceie wonderful variety of human beings.
WALTER FP. Bopner,
A. T. GANESAN,
L. A. HERZENBERG,
JOSHUA LEDERBERG,
Ev.uiorr C. Levintiar,
Eric M. SHoorter,
Smvi1o Varon,
The Faculty of the Department of
Genctics. soe rss

CONGRESSI'