SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305

JOSHUA LEDERBERG March 22, 1978
JoseEPH D. GRantT PROFESSOR
OF GENETICS

| Dr. Richard M. Krause
Director, NIAID
Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, Maryland 20014

Dear Dr. Krause:

I was very glad to get your letter of March 16 as a way of opening
what I hope will be a consistent and productive discourse about research
approaches to tropical diseases.

As you may know, I spent several years on the Advisory Committee
for Medical Research at WHO. I would have to say that the most rewarding
accomplishment was to reenforce support for the IDR initiative there
together with Gus Nossal and Christian DeDuve. We felt very strongly
that this particular arena was likely to be the most useful and effective
one for the application of basic biological and biochemical knowledge to
problems of the utmost human importance. I would be the first to support
the emphasis on “appropriate technology" whenever and whereever this is
up to the task. Your remarks about genetic mechanisms in the evolution
of parasites and in their adaptation to our counter measures must, as you
know, have struck a responsive chord with my own thinking. It appalls me
that we know very little more about the fundamental biology of plasmodium
falciparum than we did 35 years ago when I was a Navy hospital corpsman

in a parasitology laboratory at Saint Alban's Naval Hospital. I remember
taking time out from diagnostic smears to try to count the chromosomes

of falciparum; and IT doubt that this has been done any better up to the
present time.

I do look forward to tangible occasions to go into more detailed
research strategies. You probably know that I have also been in touch
with Kenneth Warren of The Rockefeller Foundation and we had a meeting
just a few days ago to help plan some high level pedagogy about tropical
disease biology.

Since you are so familiar with The Rockefeller University traditions
and environment I would also particularly welcome your suggestions about
the most efficacious ways in which the University could play a part in
what will surely be some of the most exciting developments in medical
science of the next few decades.
Page 2 3~+22-78
R. Krause

Unless you happen to be planning to be in New York during the weeks
of April 24 or June 26, I suspect that we may have to defer a closer
engagement until after September 1 when I will have moved body as well as
soul to the New York campus. If there is anything more urgent that needs
to be done or talked about before that, I hope you will let me know.

Dave Hamburg has also asked me to reenforce the IOM's positions in

international health and I will certainly do what I can on that front as
well.

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg,
Professor and Chairman,
Department of Genetics

JL/gel