g SOIT?
STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
ey STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94303

vr 11, 1975

 

at,

STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE / fk Fe
Department of Genetics iy
(415) 497-5052 os

   

Ses

Mr. Donald F.B. Jameson

Tetra Tech, Inc.

1911 Fort Myer Drive, Suite 601
Arlington, Virginia 22209

Dear Mr. Jameson,

I have your letter of April 7th concerning the position of
the Natural Resources Defense Council of which I am a trustee. As I
find myself in a rather uncomfortable, but I hope tenable, middle
position in this controversy, my posture can not be summarized as
yes or no, and I might have to take some time to explain it in detail,
Let me say, however, that I signed the Bethe Statement taking the text
as a whole; and I regret that public notice has been given almost
exclusively to the one sentence that refers to the unavoidable expansion
of nuclear energy. I believe that nuclear energy technology still faces
formidable problems of safety assurance before it can be given an un-
qualified go-ahead; but I am eager to see that it has every opportunity
to reach that state! For example, the expected time between failure
(to melt down) as analyzed by the Rasmussen Report, seems to me to be too
short by approximately an order of magnitude to offer an acceptable level
of risk. I am given no reason to believe that this improvement is un-~
achievable but I do not have estimates of its possible cost,

As to the NRDC, I am an enthusiastic supporter of its program of
litigation and judicial testing of public controversies in the area of
environmental hazard. I see this as the most orderly and effective
procedure available to us for resolving these conflicts of interest
and in that light I would hope that you would in fact consider responding
affirmatively to its request for financial support, even though you may
not agree with the actual position taken by NRDC as a legal protagonist,
These controversies are an objective reality and what NRDC does provide
is perhaps the best available procedure for dealing with them. Surely
these cases are a preferred alternative to the decision making procedure
that is advocated in the referendum constitutional amendm2nt that is
being presented to California voters at the present time,

I would agree with you, however, that some aspects of the public

relations of NRDC are stepping out of line, and I have not been
enthusiastic about the kind of mailing to which you now object. However,

over

LT. J. Pp. KENNEDY, JR. LARORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE
Mr. Donald F.B. Jameson -2- 4/11/75

,

*

just as there are some statements in the Bethe Report,which I would
have preferred to have been presented in a somewhat different tone
without being deterred from subscribing to the entire statement, I
still believe that the program of NRDC, taken as a whole, is one of the
most constructive forces for progressive change that can be found in
this country today.

However, I will use the occasion of this letter, by copy to my
fellow trustees, again to indicate my feelings about the style of these
mailings. If NRDC could find itself readier methods of achieving public
notice and especially public financial support, perhaps there would be
less motive to use this particular approach.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr
Cc: Mr. John Adams, NRDC