M1Ds

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THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK. NY 10021

 

JOSHUA LEDERBERG April 4, 1988

PRESIDENT

Dr. Frank Young
Commissioner of Food

& Drug Administration
Department of Health &
Human Services
Food & Drug Administration
Rockville, Maryland 20857

Dear Frank:

Thank you for your letter of March 21st. I do realize the
kind of heat that you had been under at FDA with everyone demand-
ing that you deliver the impossible in connection with AIDS. The
material you sent brought that home more vividly than ever.

I wish there were more that I, and the Rockefeller University,
could do in responding to the concerns you expressed. You called
the focus on one's own research "narcissistic"; it may be that,
but I think that there are also significant structural elements in
the way that careers are managed today under the grant system.

Not many investigators can have the confidence and security of
dropping their present line of work for one or two years with any
assurance that they will be able to pick up where they left off,
when they come back to their home institutions. I don't want to
burden you with more paper, but if you do watt to have amunition
on this point, do look at the enclosed talk that I gave to the
NASULGC. Until that kind of security is possible -- and it is
unlikely through the reform of the grant system so it will have
to come from more robust shelters from institutions (and how well

can we reassure our faculty?) -- we are going to be in continued
trouble.

I'd be more than happy to continue the discussion that you
bring up in the last paragraph of your letter, and in particular
to invite you to come to the Rockefeller to talk to us about what
it's like to be the commissioner of FDA, and to carry further
what would be involved in the enrollment of university scientists
into the PHS. Let me try to catch up with you in Washington
during the next several weeks; or alternatively if you're going
to be in New York please let me know.
Dr. Frank Young
April 4, 1988
Page -2-

On the scientific side, I think you and I probably are at
one on the overhang at proviral state of HIV infection. The
implications are 1) that we may substantially underestimate
the number of infected individuals and 2) that radiation and
nucleo-toxic chemicals may induce productive infections. I
don't understand why Tony Fauci can be sure that the observa-
tions he cites have "no clinical significance."

I do realize that the only way to get an idea properly
looked at is to do it yourself; but for obvious reasons I
feel rather frustrated about any realistic opportunity to
do that. I can understand that people like David Baltimore
and Howard Temin, who are so visibly at the center of
commentary on AIDS biology, take what may in fact be an
extremely conservative position in speculatizng about the
further evolution of the epidemic.

Yourg sincerely,
\
!

Jo Lederberg

Enc. P2977