(American version)

Your Holiness,.

We, the undersigned Nobel Laureates, are deeply conscious of the
immense burden of responsibility resting on the shoulders of Your
Holiness in acting on the information and analyses of the
Commission you have designated to study the subject of population
and fertility control, We extend our prayers and sympathies to
Your Holiness and to the Commission in this trying period leading
to decisions that will affect the course of history, for all time
and for all human beings, regardless of their religion. Sensitive
as all thoughtful men and women must be to the ethical context
in which marriage and the family should be viewed, we are
increasingly impressed by the emerging consensus about the goals
of family planning — namely, to assure each new infant the
birthright of a warm welcome in a loving home, with a healthy
opportunity for education, employment and fulfillment. The
pressures of population growth now add a new moral imperative to
the thoughtful consideration of family size.

In recognition of the gravity of the issue and the inevitable
worldwide consequences of your action on it, we wish to express to
Your Holiness the hope that any decisions will be the fruit of the
most profound and searching studies. To this end, we wish to

offer Your Holiness the best of our professional capacities and
endeavors,

John Bardeen

Konrad E, Bloch

Felix Bloch

Walter H. Brattain

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet
Melvin Calvin

Owen Chamberlain

Andre Cournand

Edward A. Doisy
Vincent Du Vigneaud
Sir John Carew Eccles
John F, Enders

Philip S. Hench
Robert Hofstadter
Bernardo Alberto Houssay
Edward C, Kendall
Arthur Kornberg
Willis E. Lamb

Joshua Lederberg
Tsung Dao Lee
Willard F, Libby
Fritz Albert Lipmann
Maria Goeppert-Meyer

William P. Murphy

New York
March 18, 1965

John H. Northrop

Linus C. Pauling

Edward Mills Purcell
Isidor Isaac Rabi
Dickinson W. Richards, Jr.
Frederick Chapman Robbins
Emilio Segre

William Shockley

Wendell M. Stanley
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Edward L. Tatum

Harold C. Urey

Selman A. Waksman

James D. Watson

Thomas H. Weller