STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
STANFORD MEDICAL CENTER
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA 94304

April 3, 1967 Area Code 415

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS 321-1200

To the Editor
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco, California

Dear Sir:

The Chronicle should be congratulated for its excellent news coverage of the
impact of budget cuts for mental hygiene on retarded children and on adults with
serious mental and emotional problems. There is perhaps some inclination not to
want to think about these distressing problems. If we could but "warehouse" the
mentally i11 and the retarded, perhaps we could forget about our social responsi~
bilities to these people. It is easy to show, however, that the human and economie
cost of the warehouse approach is immeasurably greater than the cost of dynamic
medical, psychothrrapeutic and educational treatment. In many @ases these can’
rescue a worthwhile life. For thig reason, the outpatient care programs have
special importance, and they had just been getting under way in the State's mental
hygiene program when the cuts were imposed. ,

The present controversy may be based on nothing more than a logistic error in the |
Governor's office. I wonder whether the actual consequences of the piece-meal
budget revisions simply had not been carefully enough calculated. There could
hardly have been enough time for a serious study in the frantic effort to recon~
struct the State's fiscal structure to match the ideologies of a newly elected
administration. This confusion can, however, be turned to good advantage if it
has dramatized the importance of the most careful study of the State's mental
hygiene progran,
I urge the Governor to appoint a commission to make such @ study: one that will
-Yealistically assess our needs in a time of rapid Changes in medical-psychiatric
technique, one that will analyze the financing and economic benefit of carefully
thought out programs for institutional and for outpatient care, one that will
encompass the whole range of governmental responsibility for mental hygiene in this
state, avoiding the game of vuckpassing between State and counties and cities, and
One that can make plans for the most effective utilization of some federal support
that is becoming available for the most forward-looking demonstration prograns.

_ The present cuts may be a small mistake, made in haste. They provoke an oppor-
tunity to demonstrate great statesmanship and deliberation, worthy of the executive
of the richest state in the union. | - .

‘Yours aincerely,

Joshua Lederberg
Director, Kennedy Laboratories

“LT, J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY | NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE