Linus Pauling: I believe first that heterozygotes should be identified. And of course it is fine
that there is a program going on. The test is very simple and cheap; the automated
tests that Dr. Nalbandian has worked on, for example; very cheap. The heterozygotes
should know that they are heterozygotes.
If two heterozygotes marry one another, they should have no children, in my opinion,
because a twenty-five percent chance of dooming your child to this life of suffering
is too great to be acceptable to a moral person. If they want to marry one another,
they should probably be sterilized so as to be sure that they would have no children.
If a heterozygote marries a normal, then they won’t have to worry about the child
leading a life of suffering, but half of the children will be heterozygotes, like
the parent, like the one parent. And the gene, the incidence of the gene, will not
die out, will not decrease.
So I think that if the heterozygote marries some other person, he should be advised
to have a smaller number of children than average, and then in the course of time
the gene will die out, or to have no children at all. Of course, the desire to have
children is a very important one, and I’m not willing to say that all heterozygotes
who marry normals should refrain from having children.
