STANFORD UNIVERSITY
MEDICAL CENTER
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

DEPAREMENE OL GENIE LICS

i
eet e

January 23, 1961 OO

Cables SUANMIP 1}

Dr. Edwerd Anders

Associate Professor of Chemistry
The University of Chicago

The Enrico Fermi Institute for
Nuclear Studles

Chicago 37, Illinois

Dear Doctor Anders:

Thank you for your manuscript on ''The Moon as a Collector of Biological
Matertal.'' { was glad to see that you have made the necessary quantitative
calculations and, without having checked them, | am still sure that they are
quite correct. The only remark 1 can make is that | have never disagreed
with your conclusion and | fear that in your very first sentence you are
misquoting me. | am enclosing a reprint of the paper you cited, marked for
the relevant phrase, which makes it quite clear that | was thinking of the
moon as a possible repository of microorganisms of terrestrial, not of extra-
solar, origin. tn fact, the main potnt of a search for microorganisms on
the moon Is to test the Implication that the moon has been periodically con-
taminated from the earth. | agree with you that the chances of finding traces
of extra-solar origin are too low to be worth considering. However, If It fs
true thet terrestrial material can be found In detectable amounts on the moon,
then your last paragraph would be substant! ated.

Since your paper does create a false Impression of disagreement that would
be hard to dislodge, { would urge you to make the appropriate revision. This
would be much more satisfactory than polemic at cross-purposes.

The one further point that we might bring Into friendly argument Is the
reasoning of the penultimate paragraph of your paper. You seem to be arguing
for a mitigation of sterilization of lunar vehicles because the moon may have
elready been contaminated since 1908. 1 would rejoin thet It !s precisely to
test such possibilities that we must keep the field aseptic for further explora-
tion. It Is rather paradoxical that the arguaents against vehicle sterilization
have come, on the one hand, from people who Insist thet the moon could never
have been # repository, and from the other, from those who suggest thet it must
have been.

Yours cordially,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

cc: Or. Graham DuShane, Science

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