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bid
June 23, 1980

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Irv London called me to mention that the MacArthur Foundation had

a proposal to spend about $5 million:to buy interferon and what did

I think of it. I told him I thought he had to be kidding but appar-
ently there is a lot of serious pressure that comes from people like
Mathilde Krim and Mary Lasker. I will not be able to join him for
the meeting that he had in mind but I referred him to Josh Fidler
who I feel has the really soundest perspective on the whole business.
In view of the fact that there is already such deep pharmaceutical
interest in the matter and that it will be a fairly short time before
pure interferon available through microbial biosynthesis he and I
seem to agree that it could be only counterproductive to try to push
with the impure materials likely to be readily available at the present
time. But Josh Fidler knows that so well that I think putting the

two of them together would be the best way to approach that problem.

6 7/80