155 Whitney Avenue Editors-in-Chief Caryl P. Haskins Hugh S. Taylor

New Haven, Connecticut 06510

Associate Editors Edgar J. Boell D. Allan Bromley

203 624 2566 Irving L. Janis A. Lee McAlester

Peter P. Wegener
Managing Editor Jane V. Olson

American
Scientist

30 November 1970

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Genetics Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94304

Dear Joshua:

Vast apologies for the length of time since you last heard from me!

A combination of a ten-day absence at the Sigma Xi meetings, consulting
with the Editorial Board, and getting the next issue out on schedule was
too much for me.

The consensus of the Board is that they would like to do your no. 218,
with the cuts suggested on the enclosed copy. They were all somewhat
perturbed by your stress on international and political problems of arms
control rather than on scientific problems of genetics or chemistry, and
their feeling was that deviation from our normal nonpolitical policy would
open Sigma Xi to possible embarrassment, to say nothing of having its non-
profit status challenged!

No one on the Board disagreed with anything you say in the pieces, but
several suggested that they would prefer to have, for American Scientist,
an article from you dealing with genetic engineering-~as one put it, "the
alteration of the genome of the individual by willful intervention." They
would really welcome a paper concerning the near-possibilities of making
these changes, with the dangers of irreversibility, etc., that are involved.

We are all glad that you are still interested in having something published
in American Scientist, and we hope you will be amenable to the cuts in

no. 218. If you are, we will plan to publish it in the March issue. ‘The
January issue is already closed out and is much larger than normal, because
it contains the proceedings from those Annual Meetings I mentioned earlier.
We will be going to press with the March issue in a few weeks, so I shall
be eagerly awaiting your reaction.

Sincerely,
Jane Olson

JO:se
Encl.