April 29, 1971

Dr. Larry Okun

Rarvard Medical School

Department of Biologicel Chemistry
Boston, Messachusetts 02115

Dear Larry,

Thank you for your letter of April 15th. We had a troublesome
hassle, including as partiel strike of black workers at the hospital
that took all of my time during the last two weeks; but I think we
may have gost juet a lull but an opening to some more peaceful times
now,

I am glad to know that you will be settling down and I was
also particularly interested to read your scientific report. I
wish I could comment gore intelligently about it but I think you
would be way ahead of me on any comments I could make at this point.
I hope we will really be seeing more of one another and we can go
into these and many other things at more congenial close distance.

Your letter to Harbury at Santa Barbara was excellent.

I thought I had put in more than my share of comment about
funding for health research in general and cautions about a
separate cancer agency in particular. I am pretty optimistic that
some reasonably satisfactory compromises are going to be worked out.
It really is notso awful if Spiegelman does get $2 million if the
overall effort is large enough that some real talent (like yours)
has a chance to be expressed. Besides, as things work out in the real
world the dollars that are labeled "Spiegelman" will themselves
filter to a considerable degree to other people in an organization
that know how to make good use of it, I can.understand your concefns
about being isolated; however, the fact thet Utah has two Senators
will still be quite meaningful in terms of iéliciting support from
Washington, You might have done even better by going to Wyoming!

All the best to you.
Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

IL/rr

4 i NOY