Westex
4o18

Abstract of letter from Carl Sagan summarizing
conversation with G.F. Gause (11/59).

....At the Darwin Centennial Celebration at Chicago last week t had the
opportunity of talking at some length with G.F. Gause of the Soviet
Academy of Medical Sciences. He assured me that both the instrument
package and the final stage carrier racket of Lunik It were sterilized. But
when | pressed him for some details, he claimed that his knowledge of the
sterilization did not exceed that published in Izvestia. He said that the
sterllization methods were those known to every graduate student [n micro-
blology at the University of Chicago, and to every manufacturer of canned
food, but he would not he more specific than that. He explained his reluc-
tance by the analogy that Abbott Laboratories in Chicago would not divulge
trade secrets to competing pharmaceutical firms; he shrugged off my ob-
jection that this was not a case for competition but for cooperation. |
feel that he knows more than he is saying, because he read a prepared
statement on the decontamination of lunar probes at the first panel session
of tho Centennial. Gause said he was interested in the possibility of pre-
paring antibiotics from extraterrestrial microorganisma as might be found
on the Moon and elsewhere, and that a paper entitled ‘Cosmic Microbiology’
is shortly to appear, or has recently appeared, in the Russian equivalent
of the JAMA. At the end of our discussion | asked him who in the Soviet
Union was working more closely with the sterilization of space vehicles
and so could provide somewhat more information. He suggested | write to
Nesmyanov! (I've forgotten to mention that he said that sterilization of
sealed components by heat or radiation posed no problems.) On all topics
unrelated to probe sterilization Gause was most affable."