a224  1247  29 Feb 80
AM-Sperm Bank, Bjt,700
Sperm Bank Renews Questions About Genetic Engineering
Laserphoto NY31
By ROBERT LOCKE
AP Science Writer
    LOS ANGELES (AP) - Disclosure of an exclusive sperm bank that offers
the sperm of Nobel Prize winners to carefully selected women has
rekindled the scientific and moral controversy sparked by genetic
engineering movements before World War II.
    Robert K. Graham, a 74-year-old retired Escondido businessman, said
he set up the sperm bank - probably the world's most exclusive - to
produce exceptionally bright children.
    But some scientists questioned on Friday were skeptical of Graham's
methods.
    ''I think there are such serious probems in this kind of social
manipulation that (there are) serious dangers involved,'' said Luigi
Cavalli-Sforza, genetics professor at Stanford University. ''Naive
enthusiasm (in this area) has very often in the past caused some major
tragedies.''
    He said even the best of humans carry some bad genes and legal
problems are possible if an offspring of the program ''turns out to be
mentally deficient, which is entirely possible.''
    Graham said at least five Nobel laureates donated sperm to be used
to artificially inseminate women, preferably those with infertile
husbands.
    ''I don't want a whole flock of ordinary women,'' Graham said.
    Graham said there is no payment for donors nor charge to recipients.
He said about two dozen women have contacted his Repository for
Germinal Choice. Three, all on the East Coast, have become pregnant,
he said.
    ''The principles of this may not be popular,'' Graham said Thursday,
''but they are sound. We're trying to take advantage of the
possibilities of genetics.''
    ''So far, we have refused to apply to humans what we already know
and apply to animals and plants,'' he said.
    ''It's crazy. I just don't know what to say about it,'' said
Princeton University psychologist Leo J. Kamin, author of ''The
Science and Politics of IQ.''
    Some scientists, and others, question whether selective breeding
will guarantee smarter or better humans.
    One acknowledged donor to Graham's program is Stanford University's
William B. Schockley, 70, winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics.
Shockley has long held that intelligence is based on genes and that
some races are gentically inferior to others.
    ''I welcome this opportunity to be identified with this important
cause,'' Shockley said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. ''I
am endorsing Graham's concept of increasing the people at the top of
the population.''
    Cavalli-Sforza said, ''It's just another episode in the eugenics
movement.''
    The movement, proposed late in the 19th century and embraced by many
scientists and government officials, was designed to improve
humanity, or individual races, by encouraging procreation by those
deemed most desirable and discouraging those judged deficient from
having children.
    Recent revelations that Virginia state hospitals had sterilized
thousands of ''misfits'' - the retarded, petty thieves and prostitutes
- grew out of laws passed in many states during the 1920s, when
eugenics was popular.
    The Virginia law, still on the books, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme
Court.
    The movement fell into disfavor when Adolf Hitler used it to justify
the Holocaust which exterminated millions of Jews, Gypsies, mentally
retarded citizens and others.
    ''People backed off when they saw what happened in Nazi Germany,''
said Princeton's Kamin. ''I think it's coming back now.''
    Kamin also said, ''The evidence is extremely weak at besi'' that
genes are the only or primary determinant of intelligence, a question
that's still being hotly debated in scientific circles. Kamin
contends environment and other factors have a major role.
    Cavalli-Sforza said, ''Even if it's scientifically valid, in the
past (similar projects) inevitably have failed.''
    He also contends the average offspring of Graham's program is likely
to be only slightly brighter than the average American - ''The
increase is going to be minimal. Any good environmental program (to
enhance home life and education) is going to be more effective.''
    
ap-ny-02-29 1544EST
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