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THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
MEDICAL SCHOOL

TELEPHONE:

DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN GENETICS
ANN ARBOR, 764-5490

1137 E. CATHERINE STREET
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
48104

April 6, 1973

Dr. Joshua Lederberg

Department of Genetics

Stanford University Medical School
Palo Alto, California

Dear Josh:

It seems that you, Sir Otto, and Gunther Stent are the
speakers on the Symposium which I will chair on "Genetics
in Human Affairs" at the Berkeley Congress. When you get
around to outlining your presentation, I would appreciate some
indication of its general thrust. Sir Otto is fairly pre-
dictable, but Stent is not. In view of our recent exchange
of letters, to what extent will you be countering a point of
view which Stent may be expected to develop. I might say that
with respect to my opening remarks, I expect to present the
point of view that for the foreseeable future, the human
geneticist should not regard himself as a knight in shining
armor riding out to transmute bad genes, but a member of a
team trying to define how genetic factors contribute to
disease and then with his peers considering how we develop
a culture that minimizes the expression of these genetic
predispositions and gives each of our unique phenotypes the
squarest shake possible.

Best regards,

  
   

James V. Neel, M.D. Ce
Lee R. Dice University Professor
pt of Human Genetics

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