August 15, 1967

Dr. Aaron M. Altschul

Special Assistant for

International Nutrition Improvement
International Agricultural Development Service
United States Department of Agriculture
Washington, D. C. 20250

Dear Dr. Altschul:

It was most gratifying to receive your letter of August & referring to my
articles on "Seience and Man”. Letters like that are a great encouragement
for me to keep my oar in this way.

Since I had already been very much impressed by the report of the PSAC sub-
panel of which you were a member, I was pleased but not greatly surprised
at the relevance of the additional material you sent me, which I was very
glad to read. In particular I was a little disappointed that the sub-panel
did not stress even more vehemently the prospect for industrial production
of aynthetic amino acids.

Are you content with the responses that have been set in motion in India and
in the Department of Agriculture? Are there gome issues of technicAl policy
that might be singled out for special emphasis, for example, in some future
column that I might be able to write? Would these columns have any useful
impact on people in important decision-making roles, or in informing their
constituencies?

T am moved to write in this vein particularly because of my disappointment

at the Senate committee's cut-back in the authorization for technical assis-~-
tance in the foreign aid program. Unfortunately, I do not know enough of

the specifics of the programa that will be pinched by such a cut-back to feel
able to be very useful in any further discussion of the subject with congress-
men. But if there were some way I could lend a hand I would like to be able
to.

I am glad your enclosures pointed me to your book on "Proteins, Their Chemistry
and Politics", and I will not waste any time in getting to read it.

Do you know whether it is possible to point to any really critical studies on
the relatioship between amino acid deficiency and mental retardation? I don't
really doubt the resuit, and I realize the methodological difficulttes in a
rigorous proof from clinical observation, but I wonder what you would regard

as the most compelling decumentation for it. I might perhaps make my question
more pointed by asking if there is any insight into just which amino acid de-
ficiency is the most critical in this context.

FAHOSL7¥
Dr. Aaron M. Altschul August 15, 1967
Page 2

IT am very much taken with your idea of nutrient pearls as the medium for
supplementing grains. Do you think it would be hopeless to educate an illit-
erate population to look for such pearls as the sign of good food and to mark
them distinctively accordingly, rather than trying to make them inconspicuous
go that they will not be conaciously rejected?

Just one finel comment. I rather wish the expression "quality" had never

been introduced for the idea of amino acid balance in proteins. It may be

some of the source of the confusion that you complain about in the slow response
of some nutrition policy makers to the idea of specific supplementation.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics