April 14, 1970

Dr. Fred L. Soper
4104 Rosemary Street
Chevy Chase, Maryland 20015

Dear Dr. Soper:

I very such appreciate your critical and constructive cowments. Some of the
faults of the pieces I had written I might shrug aside as inevitable in such
an abbreviated article, but it is certainly true that there were several
matters on which I had an insufficiently sharp focus, and I waa quite delighted
to be brought short on then.

A newspaper column does not allow much latitude for corrections of detail,
but I will shortly be preparing a set of my columns for publication in book
form. Would you be agreeable to my incorporating part of your letter as a
corrective comment?

Might I urge you to write you the "fextbook" on yellow fever for which you would
be so uniquely qualified? I find that we are in a very small minority to share
an urgent concern about the recrudescence of major epidemics, and I think it is
most vital to reawaken the interest of a broader community on these matters.

The relative silence of the public health officitaldom has generated a very per-
vasive but, I think we must beth agree, a totally unwarranted sense of compla-
cency.

I am sure there must be many pecple whe would welcome, as much as I, an authori-
tative exposition at a semi-technical level, like that of your letter.

Has Aedes aegypti in fact been litereAlgyeradicated in Mexico or in Brazil?

I would be grateful if you could point me to the appropriate literature to
substantiate eradication to a level of rigor such that one would insist that
any specimin was necessarily a reintroduction. I offer this comment in all
innocence ~ some of my ecological friends have insisted to me that no inver-
tebrate pest had ever been intentionally eradicated over a significantly large
area. Do you see any prospect of getting sufficient cooperation from the other
hold-outs in and around the Caribbean to warrant a final conclusive effort on
our own tertitory?

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

 
Dr. Fred L. Soper April 14, 1970
Page 2

P.S. I webld be very pleased were you to recast your letter to me in the form
of a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, which should have a high
probability of being accepted for publication in what is, as you know, an influ-
ential community. I would even be glad to be the stalking horse for a public
expression of the same criticism you were courteous enough to send me privately;
others might be confused into believing that this was a polemic, however, and I
think you could mhhe the same points even more effective by describing them as
an amplification of the remarks in my own column. Space is an eternal problem,

and a piece not longer than my own column would stand the most chance of being
taken up for publication.

Joshua Lederberg