: CM! torr

STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 ¢ (415) 321-1200

 

 

December 14, 1971

STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Department of Genetics

Professor Henry Harris

Sir William Dunn School of Pathology
University of Oxford

South Parks Road

Oxford OX1 3RE ENGLAND

Dear Professor Harris,

I was most interested to receive your letter of November 10th
and am very much stimulated by your suggestions of further studies
on the identification of neoplastic markers, If these can be tested
in conventionally heterozygous confontrations in diploid cells it
would indeed dispell the obscurity that I perhaps unfairly laid
on the subject in my popular article, In my reading of the literature
up to past January I had found it difficult to distinguish between
effects of dominants and complementation on the one hand, and a more
generalized chromosome unbalance on the other. As you summarize very
succinctly in your Croonian Lecture, the neoplastic state is highly
adapted and therefore could be disrupted by relatively nonspecific
disturbances of gene dosage as well as by specific suppression, I was
merely trying to lean over backwards not to accept too enthusiastically
the most desirable situation from the standpoint of further genetic
analysis and possibly of therapeutic application; And I guess I could
have had in mind effects like 21-trisomy which ought not to be used
as an argument for specific suppression of intellectual development.
In any rate, believe me my fault lay, if anything, in gecess of caution
rather than in an unwillingness to be convinced.

This letter is, however, really a request for a favor, namely that
you not be offended at what may be a presumptuous suggestion, I have been
asked by some of my local colleagues to chair a session on some
fundamental advances in cell biclogy for the benefit of a meeting of
the Society for Gynecological Investigation in San Francisco on March 23rd,
I could think of no one whom I would prefer to bring to such a meeting
as much as for my own as for the audience's benefit than yourself.
Unfortunately, I have a budget of just $1,000, I realize that this
honorarium will not do much more than cover your travel expense and
would in no case be commensurate with a proper recognition of what you
have to offer. Let me, nevertheless, try it out on you in the hope that
it may still strike your fancy or that it may happily coincide with other
plans that you might possibly have, The group consists of gynecologists
who are for the most part actively engaged in research, but few of them
at the basic level reflected in your own work; they would, I am sure, bring
a very high level of interest and would come away with great profit from
your presentation which I would tentatively suggest center on the utility
of cell fusion for the study of gene expression and of neoplasia.

Liima}) S°adadH

over

LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE
Professor Henry Harris -2- 12/14/71

If you can accept this invitation it would be my part to
introduce you and then take some time as an active moderator
in some informal discussion following your presentation, The
program is scheduled for San Francisco the morning of Thursday
March 23, We might also try to induce you to speak at Stanford
if this can be conveniently arranged and for which I am sure I
can dredge up some additional but modest compensation.

I hope you can find it possible to accept this invitation,
but if not, I would appreciate the favor of an early reply, so
that I can make a less ambitious effort elsewhere,

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr