THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
1230 YORK AVENUE : NEW YORK,N.Y.10021

PHYSICItAN-IN-CHIEF

13 June 1980

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
President
The Rockefeller University

Dear Josh:

I am enclosing a copy of a letter I sent to Dr. Leschly at Squibb
and the several reprints on steroid pharmacology enclosed with it.

Incidentally, I think that it was Hans Selye, who can be credited
with the first solid evidence that steroid metabolites have biological
properties independent of their precursor hormones; specifically it was
he who discovered the anesthetic effect of certain 58 metabolites of sex
steroids. This work is reviewed in my Pharmacological Reviews report.

I think our own serendipitous discovery of the pyrogenic effect of
steroids was probably the first demonstration in humans of the concept
that steroid metabolites are not inert degradation products of the
hormones from which they are derived, but may have novel and independent
biological properties of their own. Dr. Hamburg remembered my name in
connection with that work which naturally enhanced my already great
admiration for him. The recent work in estrogens by Jack is an elegant
extension of this idea and it may yet turn out that endocrinologists
will come to believe what pharmacologists have known for some time -
i.e. that no chemical can be considered to be devoid of potential bio-
logical action until it finally disappears into the excreta.

Sometime at your leisure I'll tell you the story of how I discovered
the pyrogenic actions of 58 steroids - and what it cost me in actual
dollars in a poker game we were having at the Yale Club, the evening of
the day in which I took the first injection of the 58 steroid etiocholanolone.

With best regards.

Yours sincerely,

/
A
AttallahfKappas, M.D.

Encl.