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381 Crest Road MAR 18 1983

Ridgewood, New Jersey 07450 Leo. ene
o CF The Pie”
March 15, 1983 ==="

Dr. Joshua Lederberg, President
Rockefeller University

1230 York Avenue

New York, NY 10021

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

I found your comments in Sunday's New York Times
to be very stimulating, and am especially interested in

your observation that until 1946 bacterj e assumed

to have "no genetics." I am writing -« book shout the

Army's bacteriological warfare tests conducted after 1949

in which populated areas were exposed to large numbers of
supposedly harmless bacteria. In a recent trial against

the Army, plaintiffs contended that an outbreak of Serratia
marcescens infections in 1950 at a hospital in San Francisco
was caused by the Serratia marcescens that had been sprayed
over the city three days earlier. The government denied

the relationship. It held that the Army's strain of Serratia
was harmless, and that even allowing for subsequent genetic
changes in the Serratia marcescens, three days would have
been too brief a period for the bacteria to have become
suffciently pathogenic and numerous to cause disease.

I have two questions that were prompted by your
comments. First, by 1950 was there general agreement
among experts that supposedly harmless bacteria could
undergo genetic changes that would render them pathogenic?
If so, would a three-day period have been considered
sufficiently long to cause disease?

Although my questions might seem mundane, it has not
been easy to get a real sense of the state of the art around
1950. I would be most grateful for any help you can offer.

Yours sincerely,