RESEARCH CORPORATION

405 LEXINGTON AVENUE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10017

KENDALL W. KING
ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT—GRANTS

March 11, 1976

Dr. Joshua Lederberg

Department of Genetics

Stanford University Medical Center
Stanford, California 94305

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

Appended to an application we received from David Werner
was a copy of your letter of October 10, 1975 to Kenneth
Newell at WHO. Two things about that letter caught my
attention.

One was a delightful moment of recall of the finest course
I ever had -- one called, I believe, Microbial Genetics

at Madison in days long gone when I was of the opinion
that mastery of pure biochemistry was the apex of intellec-
tual achievement.

The other was to see at least a snatch of your concern
about the frustrations of Third world health care. The
world needs to divert the thrust of intellects like yours
in that direction. Your support of Werner is therefore
heartening.

What he has been promoting is closely related to my own
main efforts of the past 18 years, and reviewing his work
to date I would have only one quarrel with it. With three-
quarters of the 7.5 x 105 child deaths per year in this
hemisphere being nutritionally predicated, there is
disappointingly little in the way of practical nutritional
information in Donde No Hay Doctor. But there could be a
great deal. It is a failing to which Mahler of WHO has
recently called attention with appropriate bluntness.

One kind of attack on clinical nutrition problems that is

widely adaptable to programs Like Werner's is described in
the enclosed manuscript which will appear in the next issue

A FOUNDATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE
Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Stanford University Medical Center

March 11, 1976
Page 2

of the Journal of Tropical Pediatrics and Environmental
Child Health. If you have reactions to it, I'd like to
hear them.

It was good to run into you again if only through the
accidents created by invention of Xerox machines.

pty

Kendall W. King
GG
Enclosure

ce: Dr. H. P. Mahler, Director-General, WHO
Mr. David Werner, Hesperian Foundation
Dr. Moises Behar, WHO