STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
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STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Department of Genetics
Professor Joshua Lederberg

September 22, 1971

Mr. Martin L. Gross

Editor, INTELLECTUAL DIGEST
110 E. 59 Street

New York NY 10002

Dear Mr. Gross--

I was pleased at the courtesy of having been
telephoned by one of your staff about the reliability
of the quotations attributed to me in "The Pollution
of Food", which appeared in your Oct. 71 issue. I was
less pleased that some misattributions still permeate
the article -- for example, I made no declarations
about nitrite. I hope you might be more critical in
future about a style that juxtaposes: "' If you swallow
any one of them straight you will probably die", fol-
lowed immediately by another direct quote from me.
Such writing leaves a false impression of my endorsement
of the content and manner of Zwerdlins's imprecations.

Of course, you are absolved of primary responsibility
for such productions -- and your editorial reference
to 'muckraking! may improve a reader's perspective on
such writing. To fulfill my responsibility for some
precision in public distributions which invoke my own
scientific expertise , I would have preferred an oppor-
tunity, in such an example, to state that I did not
necessarily agree with the context in which quotations
attributed to me were embedded.

To turn to another article in that issue, you may
yourself be wxikk interested in a reply that I had
written elsewhere to Jim Watson's piece.

rs sincerely,~
f . — 5
Lr. Josern P. KENNEDY, Jr. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MatjciNe 7 Y if
dedicated to the study of mental retardation” “ U. NA ae :

Molecular Biclogy Heredity Neurobiology Developmental Medicine

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