SIPRI
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR’ PEACE
AND CONFLICT RESEARCH

Chairman: Prof. Gunnar Myrdal Sveavagen 166
Director: Mr. Robert Neild 11346 Stockholm
SWEDEN

Ass. Director: Mr. Jan Martenson
Telephone: 34 96 00
Cables: Peaceresearch

November 18, 1968

CGH/LS

Prof. Joshua Lederberg

Dept. of Genetics

Stanford University School
of Medicine

Stanford Medical Center

Palo Alto, Calif. 94304

U. S.A.

Dear Prof. Lederberg:

Just back from a long trip to the Far East I have now been over
your comments on the planning for the Nobel Symposium and feel that
I must express my personal appreciation to you for having given this
project so much though. Your comments will be of very great help to
us - help we certainly need in this undertaking which is full of
difficulties, one being that we tend to get such an overweight from
the U.S. which is of course a natural phenomenon.

I agree that the Symposium will principally have symbolic value,
but at the same time there are certain current initiatives, like the
establishment of a World University, where the Conference may consider-
ably accelerate developments. In fact there is in close contact over
this matter between the Stockholm Conference and the New York Conference:
"Society in Transition" a month later. The latter may act as a second
stage booster putting the project into an orbit where a major Conference,
planned for 1970, may have a great impact.

Just as an example of an unrelated stepwise development I enclose
a copy of a paper which I presented in Vienna earlier this year. This
is related to my personal involvement with BW-disarmament which has now
caused me to take a year's leave of absence in order to coordinate the
studies carried out by SIPRI . Our aim is to provide a substantial back-
ground document particularly for the disarmament conference in Geneva,
but I plan to split the text on conceivable initiatives at two levels:

 
SIPRI

November 18, 1968

Prof. Joshua Lederberg

intergovernmental and non-governmental activities. The latter will
be the subject for a special session at the International Micro-
biology Congress in Mexico 1970 where Lwoff will chair a panel
hopefully including both Housewright, Zhtlanov and a few other ex-
perts to discuss the matter. Perhaps an "open laboratories club"
Might be established where the members submit their facilities to

a voluntary inspection procedure of a type we are now experimenting
with (sample enclosed). On the intergovernmental level there might
perhaps develop a similar bond between aid and compulsory inspection
as there already exists within the International Atomic Energy Agency
in Vienna.

You have one of the most fertile minds I know, and if those notes
give you any bright ideas, please let me know.

Looking forward to seeing you next year in Stockholm.

inger yours ,
\Z
&)

Carl-Géran Hedén

ce: §. Nilsson

Encl.