An article on Williams syndrome has appeared in the December, 1997 issue of the Scientific American magazine.
The WSF is pleased to now make available the complete article as it originally appeared in Scientific American.
The title is: Williams Syndrome and the Brain. The authors are doctors H. Lenhoff, P. Wang, F. Greenberg, and U. Bellugi. It is in .pdf format and requires Adobe Acrobat to view it.
The article is nicely illustrated and gives a clear and concise exposition of much current basic research dealing with Williams syndrome.
A Japanese abstract of the article is also now available.
The following letter appeared in the Scientific American magazine, April, 1998, Vol. 278, No. 4, page 10.
The recent article "Williams Syndrome and the Brain," by
Howard M. Lenhoff, Paul P. Wang, Frank Greenberg and Ursula
Bellugi [December 1997], was a poignant and insightful
piece. How much gentleness, insight and wisdom would be
lost from our cultural heritage if we were to screen out
such "defects" and narrow the human genome. Although I
anxiously await the benefits that modern genetics may bring
us, I am perplexed by the thought of how little of human
nature we can truly measure with superficial tools such as
the Intelligence Quotient.
ROBERT D. SHEELER
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, Minn.
