Resources for the Future
Charles J. Hitch, President May 6, 1976

Professor Joshua Lederberg
Department of Genetics
School of Medicine

Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

Your 1971 article has reached me just as I am about to take off for
the IIASA conference in Vienna and a couple of weeks in Europe.

I am in no sense an expert on the rather unsatisfactory literature
on the valuation of life and health, and passed your paper to my colleague
at RFF, Eugene Seskin, who has been working with me (and Dorfman, Raiffa,
and others) on an Academy committee dealing with this and related aspects
of environmental decision making. I attach a copy of his comments, and
will also send you a copy of Chapter 10 of the Lave/Seskin manuscript to
which he refers.

Please let me know if there is anything else you would like for me to
follow up on after I return from Europe. We expect to have some written
material by summer from the NAS Committee.

Sincerely,
é

ty gr af,
C tx Le~ ban L-
Charles J. Hitch

Encl.

cc: Eugene Seskin

1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036
202/462-4400 Cable: Resources