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.

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.