DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE

WASHINGTON

 

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY

March 24, 1964

Dr. Joshua Lederberg

Professor of Genetics

Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford Medical Center

300 Pasteur Drive

Palo Alto, California

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

Your recent letter to Mr. Luther W. Stringham has been forwarded
to this office for reply. Mr. Stringham left the Department in
November 1963 to assume the position of Executive Director of the
National Association for Retarded Children.

We have had a number of request for information regarding the

3% figure used by the President's Panel on Mental Retardation to
estimate the number of mentally retarded in the United States.

The National Institute of Mental Health has provided the following
material related to this inquiry:

"The estimated 3% of the population, numbering at that

time (1962) about 5 million, was taken from the joint
efforts of the members of the Committee on Mental
Deficiency of the Group for the Advancement ,of Psychiatry.
These figures have been rather generally accepted by our
colleagues in the field as reasonably accurate.

Dr. Clemens E. Benda cites these and other figures at
considerable length in his paper entitled "Clinicopatho-
logical Considerations of Mental Deficiency, Based on

an Analysis of 400 Autopsies" on page 33 of Proceedings
of the Conference on Research and Training in the Field
of Mental Retardation held at The Lynchburg Training
School and Hospital, Colony, Virginia on September 11-12,
1958. Using these figures, Dr. Benda in the same booklet
describes in Table I a breakdown of the percentages and
approximate numbers of mildly, moderately, and severely
retarded. A copy of this Table is enclosed."

MAR & & 1964

GRA LET IE
EDN
2

We recognize that additional studies need to be made in this area.

The Department currently has a number of proposals under consideration
that will throw light on this subject.

I hope this will be of some help to you,

Sincerely yours,

(Wathen [. Balun fer

Wallace K. Babington
Executive Vice Chairman

Secretary's Committee on
Mental Retardation
Enclosure