CHEF ELLER @1//7-~ w “iy AQUAN23 i 982 0 FICE of THE PRESS THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY HO i 1230 YORK AVENUE - NEW YORK,NY. 10021 ot PHYSICIAN-IN-CHIEF 25 January 1982 Dr. Joshua Lederberg President The Rockefeller University Dear Josh: Thanks for the article entitled "Scientists explore drug metabolism/ age relationship". It was interesting - especially the part where they don't mention the fact that it was our laboratory which discovered that children at an early postnatal (2-4 yrs) age metabolize drugs much more "vigorously" (as they say) relative to their body weight than do adults. I guess this phenomenon has been now rediscovered by somebody else. Along these lines there was a lead article in the New England Journal of Medicine on primary biliary cirrhosis, a truly unique, de- bilitating and lethal form of liver disease in which not one reference in the paper reached back beyond 1977, and nearly every other one was dated 1980 or 1981. In all this there was not the slightest hint from the list of references that this complex liver disorder was discovered and pathologically and biochemically beautifully defined by Ahrens and Kunkel here in the 1950s, when they wrote a superb monograph on this disorder in one of the most widely read journals, "Medicine" edited at Hopkins. It really does seems to be a “what have you done lately" kind of world. a Yours sincerely, is seaarsle