December 30, 1957
Dear Jack:
I was just delighted to receive your letter of the 26th and the accompanying manuscript. I have been bewailing the deficiencies of my superficial attempt  along similar lines for the symposium a couple of years ago and was wondering when someone, if not myself, ought not to take up the burden of a more explicit statement of what "The Genetics of Cancer" really means. I was pleased to see such a good job as is represented in your paper. Of course there are going to be some points of emphasis that we might handle differently but hardly worth writing about. I certainly agree that transduction is a much less promising mode of approach to genetic analysis of somatic cells than transplantation or other more nearly conventional processes. Many people have been trying to put words in my mouth with respect to the role of viruses as transducing agents in relation to cancer and all I can say of course is that this represents just one conceivable aspect of the genetic functions of viruses.
As a matter of fact I have started to scribble a few lines for a paper of somewhat similar intent but I doubt now whether I could add very much to your presentation at present be possible to make a somewhat more detailed that the development of a tumor being certainly an evolution of a cell line that every genetic process that can conceivably participate in evolutionary change can likewise play a role in the initiation and progression of cancers. In a more detailed account one might also take time to illustrate how a genetic analysis can in principle cope with such phenomena as carcinogenesis, co-carcinogenesis, progression, and so forth. But there is certainly no urgency about such a review at the present time and between you and Huaschka the job has just about been done. Perhaps better now to go back to the laboratory and do all the wonderful things that we see as prospects of the horizon.
Please do send me a printed copy or two of your discussion when it is ready. I hope to be in Philadelphia in mid-March for some lectures at Haverford College and hope the occasion will give me a chance to see you at that time. Until then, with best regards,
Yours sincerely,
Joshua Lederberg