APR19 197f
HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL

DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02115

April 15, 1971

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Department of Genetics
Stanford Medical School
Stanford, California 94305

Dear Josh,

I'm embarrassed at how long I've owed you a letter reporting
progress and expressing thanks for your help during the job hunt.
I hope this will at least partly redeem my "account".

To save time on the progress report, I'm enclosing a copy of
a letter I sent to Don Kennedy a while ago which describes most of
the project's successes. As updates, I might mention that we have
had fairly good luck culturing spinal cord neurons (which we hope
eventually to hook up with the sensory cells), that the search for
UV-induced DNA repair synthesis in sensory neurons showed that they
do have it, and that, with the help of a post-doc in the Neurobiology
Department here, very nice intracellular recordings have been ob-
tained from the sensory neurons (my current thought js that a com-
bined intracellular - extracelluar recording arrangd@jént offers the
best chance of early success in the search for synapses). Also,
the longest of the transformation papers is about half-finished; I
hope to spend a lot more time on them late this spring.

As you probably know from Gan, I've decided on the job in
Gordon Lark's department at Utah. It seemed the best choice on al-
most every count, especially so because of the size, quality, and
interests of the group of young people Lark has gathered there. On
the basis of location alone, though, Santa Barbara would have had
the edge, and I found the group there a friendly one. But uncer-
tainties about the future of UC (at least the near future) weighed
too heavily. The people at Santa Barbara understood, and I think
agreed with, most of my apprehensions. Ellis, in fact, asked me
to detail them in a letter to the department chairman that could
be used as documentation of recruitment difficulties; since I think
you might be interested, I'm enclosing a copy of that letter too.

I'm also going to take this opportunity to put in a plug for
more columns on the fiasco in health research funding that seems
imminent. I know you started a discussion of the issue in at least
one recent column, but I think more are needed. I'm particularly
worried about the "crash program" to cure cancer and the decisions
that have apparently been made to concentrate funds in a relatively
few large laboratories. Conversation around here, for example, has
it that Sol Spiegelman is being given $2 million a year and that
George Todaro at NIH will have support for a group of 60 (not count-
ing technicians, etc.) directly under him. Leaving aside the ques-
tion of whether anybody can responsibly administer basic research
groups so large, I'd like to see more discussion of what is going
Dr. Joshua Lederberg April 15, 1971
Page 2

to be lost in the drying up of support for small, independent
(dare I say innovative?) labs that is bound to accompany such

concentration. (Admittedly there's a little "special pleading"
in my bringing this up - the future looks grim the way things
seem headed.) Also more ought to be said about the political

risks of public disillusionment if a long period of highly
publicized crash funding goes by without dramatic results, as
might well happen.

Finally, Josh, though they are probably understood anyway,
let me mention again my thanks for whatever comments you made
in responding to reference requests that helped open up the
several job possibilities.

Regards to Marg trite. I hope we'll have a chance to see
you both again soon. (Salt Lake City isn't so very far from
San Francisco!)

Sincerely yours,

/

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