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November 2, 19706

Statement of Drs. David A. Hamburg and Joshua Lederberg
on their role In the Program on a Technology-Dependent
Civilization.

The following statement, based upon remarks In the NSF
proposal at pages 9-10, encompasses the role we expect to
play In the program.

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To add to our competence In managing this program, this Center
will appoint Professors David A. Hamburg and Joshua Lederberg as
Biclogists in Residence, and as members of the Advisory Board which
will guide our program designed to Inquire into the social consequences
of science and technological change. Other members of the Advisory
Board will Include Robert K. Merton, of Columbia University;

Cary! P. Haskins, of Carnegie Institution of Washington, 0.C.; a
physical scientist of comparable national stature; and

0. Meredith Wilson, the Director of this Center. The functions
of the Advisory Board will include:

1. Continuous review and definition of the program.

2. Nominating and recruiting the relevant fel lows.
This will entail much more than the identification
of Individual talents, since many of the people
we would most avidly seek will make their decision
on the strength of the collective effort.

3. A careful reevaluation of Its own membership and
the power to expahd itself when circumstances require.

4, Perlodic meetings (at least quarterly) In which
careful assessment of progress, suggestions of new
avenues of inquiry and nominations of scholars
for the program will be central to their agenda.

5. Reviewing related programs of other institutions.
When considered wise, development of a cooperative
relationship with similar councils, centers and
institutions to avold wasteful duplication and to
get reinforcements for its own program.

In addition, as Biologists in Residence, Professors Hamburg and
Lederberg, who have agreed to appointments for from ten to twenty
percent of their time, will:

1. Aid us in making appropriate arrangements for
laboratory facilities for experimental biologists
whose work requires continuing contact with a
laboratory.

2. Participate as Fellows in Residence by organizing,
facilitating, and contributing to seminars on both
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the general and the applied problems.

3. Maintain a critical overview of the program as a
whole for reports and justification to funding
sources.

Besldes affirming our understanding and Interest In the commitment thus
stated, we can add little except that we expect to have the responsibility for
maintaining the continulty of the program from year to year, and for the
breadth of the intellectual base of the program.

Our participation Is expected to require ‘office hours’ of about 4 per
week, on a regular schedule, in addition to frequent participation in seminars,
lunch meetings, and I[ike communications that we will help to organize. While
these are crystallizing our time commitment at the Center Is likely to fluctuate
between 10 and 20% of our time.

In addition, most of our educational efforts, and a significant part of
our research, away from the Center, are still devoted to very closely related
kinds of Issues.

However, the group of fellows, whom we would help to recruit from year to
year, represent a potential faculty of colleagues who could not possibly be
matched at Stanford, or at any other single university campus in the world.

The opportunity of working In the company of such a group Is the major Incentive
to our participation In the program, and gives us the optimism that we may be
able to reach a new level of critical and constructive study of problems of the
uses of technology. We are well aware that the whole Institution of sclentific
research Is at stake, a concern which touches us particularly as sclentists,
while we also try to satisfy our consclences about our clvic responsibilities.

The time has long passed for reflexive, defensive arguments about the
utllity of sclence for Its own sake. We do not need to question this, nor
do we; but we must also seek more effective ways of discovering and communicating
whatever objective truth can be found about the imperfect adjustments of
technological progress to human needs and their further amelioration.