May 28,1980

Douglas Gairdner,DM, FRCP
Rutherford Road
Cambridge CB2,2HH
London, England

Dear Dr. Gairdner:

I have been informed by Dr. Marguerite Lederberg about

your article in the September 29,1979 iseue of British
Medical Journal entitled "The Rhesus Story". Dr. Lederberg
(whose husband is the Nobelist Dr. Joshua Lederberg,
President of Rockefaller University) read an abstract of
your Rritish Medical Journal article in the April 1980
issue of Psychiatric Capsule & Comment which is edited by
Dr. S.J. Guze,.

On page 709 of the British Medical Journal you state as
follows: “so the matter rested until 1940 when Karl
Landsteiner at the Rockefeller Institute, and A.S. Wiener
working in a blood transfusion laboratory in Brooklyn,
published a brief paper on "An agglutinable factor in
human blood recognizeddby immune sera for rhesus blood."
A copy of their 1940 paper is herewith enclosed which is
to be pompared with my 1939 paper (with Stetson). The
Karl Landsteiner and A.S. Wiener 1940 paper gives no
indication of the clinical importance of their finding.
Kindly read my 1939 paper carefully and note the clinical
implications and the reference to the transplacental
passage of fetal REC into the maternal circulation.

Fven excellent geneticists such as ny good friend

Professor Bently Glass and Dr.Richard King fell into the
game trap. Note however that Professor Glass has corrected
the matter in the September issue of Quarterly Review of
Rlology.
May 28, 1980
Douglas Gairdner Page 2

Enclosed is a preprint of a paper entitled "Bistorical
Perspectives Before 1945~-Updated" ho be included in a
book to: be published in a month or so. In Table 1 I
listed papers dealing with tsoimmunization in several
species but it is not possible to include the 1940

Karl Landsteiner and A.S. Wiener paper which does not
deal with isoimmunization but rather with heteroimmuniza-
tion.

The fundamental basis for my associating isoimmunization
with the pathogeneses of erythroblastosis fetalesa was
supplied by my 1939 paper. You may verify these facts
with Dr. Pat Mollison or Drs. Race and Sanger whom I have
known for many years.

I appreciate that you emphasize clinical aspects of the
Rh story and the role of potent Rh antibodies in its
preventions. It may interest you to know that I spent
seven years (1925-1932) at the then Rockefeller Institute
working with Dr. Landsteiner. It was during my close
association with this N@belist that I learned the meaning
of research.

Rest wishes.

Sincerely yours,

Philip Levine,M.D.,F.R.C.P.

PL: ik
enc.