May 17, 1966

Mr. Russel Wiggins
Editor in Chief
Washington Post
Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. Wiggins:

David Hamburg called me after talking to Mr. Meyer, to confirm
our appointment for Friday afternoon, 4 p.m. He suggested I mail you
some explanatory material, and I hope this can reach you in time to
be of help.

I should explain some of the explanation. The article "Experimental
Genetics and Human Evolution” was written for a rather technical
audience and will appear in a centennial issue of "American Naturalist’:
some of the jargon needs to be revised to make it legible to the
"Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’. I leave it now because it is a ratheer
comprehensive statement of my most passionate concerns about the
impact of science, and can tell you something about the social and
ethical platform of my thinking. I do not know when I would be ready
to press some of the more detailed extropolations (like my prophecy of
vegetative reproduction). I would probably wait until some more concrete
milestones were laid down in contemporary scientific progress and use
these as they arise to support whatever gommentary they validate. And
of course the actual outcome of biomedical research, week by week, is
quite unpredictable,

The piece on the misinterpretation of Mariner IV was written in the
form of a letter to the editor, but should be reasonably typical of the
style of writing I might use in the columns. However, these should be
much more casual, dealing with one small point at a time: the cumulative
impact of such a series should stimulate more thoughtful debate than a
few shrill yelps of anguish.

Looking forward to meeting you.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JLieif