DAVIS, D. Z,

THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE -NEW YORK.NEW YORK 10021

THE PRESIDENT

 

June 28, 1978

Dr. Devra Lee Davis

Science Advisory Board

Office of the Deputy Assistant Administrator
for Testing and Evaluation

U. S. Environmental Protection Agency

401 M Street, S.W.

Washington, D. C. 20460

Dear Dr. Davis:

I am very glad that you were able to give me the
copy of your testimony with respect to personnel re-
quirements needed for the implementation of recent
environmental legislation. I had asked Dr. Rall for
precisely this information some little while ago but
it was not available at this time and your material
is right on line. I suspect it may even underestimate
the requirements for the infrastructure of research
that you allude to in the "forcing of basic science"
on page 2. In this respect certainly our views could
not be more convergent.

I do have just some comments: #t is one thing to
talk about "forcing basic science"; another to see
where the resources to allow that to happen are going
to come from. Second, it seems to me terribly important
not to overlook the policy-analysis framework in which
this toxicology has to be done. At the very least the
training of the people who will occupy the front lines
should include a rather broader perspective than experi-
mental work on biological specimens. I am not sure that
I can identify many existing institutions whose training
has the requisite depth and there will certainly be sig-
nificant additional staffing requirements for that purpose.

My efforts to put together such an interdisciplinary
program at Stanford were quite unavailing in the light of
the undeviating focus of a medical school on issues con-
nected with health care and therapeutics. It would gratify me
Dr. Devra Lee Davis
June 28, 1978

-2-

very much to renew that effort at The Rockefeller Univer-
sity but resources are again very much in question and I
am not much more optimistic here in the present climate.
However, it is certainly useful in many ways to be in
touch with the thinking of people in government who can
perhaps more credibly articulate the underlying motive
for this demand.

I am afraid, from some of your other remarks, that
I was trying to cover too much ground in a rather short
time;and that many of my statements must not have been
clear; to the point where they were interpreted as almost
the opposite of what I was trying to say. I am afraid
that I may have let my own enthusiasm for the subject
carry me away, without sufficient regard for the circum-
stances and tolerance of my audience.

I assume that it was quite transparent that the person
who had received that pink sheet that I was quoting was my-
self. Having had an almost identical experience in 1965,
when I was trying to arouse some interest in basic studies
on chlorination,I really have begun to despair about the
possibility of bringing in an open-minded basic science
orientation to environmental health studies of this kind.
But I am confident that there will be some eventual recog-
nition of the importance of studying the chemistry of ma-
terials like carbon:more so if they will be put into wide-
spread circulation even at the insistence of environmental
health authorities.

As I promised you, I will be preparing a written sub-
mission on the question of the draft regulations for the
use of activated carbon and will remember to send you a
copy. I am really glad to have had this opportunity to
be in touch with your office and I am sure that there will
be many other scientific and policy questions in the
future that would be profitable, certainly from my side,
to discuss at greater length. After I have actually moved
to New York in September this will, of course, be much
more convenient.

Yours sincerely,
a
_ Joshua Lederberg