Germs in space

ISIS

Volumn 93, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 183-205

  Wolfe, Audra J ^a  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ART; ARTICLE; ASTRONOMY; BIOGENESIS; BIOLOGY; HISTORY; HUMAN; INSTRUMENTATION; MICROCLIMATE; RESEARCH; SPACE FLIGHT; UNITED STATES;

BIOGENESIS; EXOBIOLOGY; EXTRATERRESTRIAL ENVIRONMENT; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; METEOROIDS; PORTRAITS; RESEARCH; SPACE FLIGHT; UNITED STATES;

EID: 0036595356     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/344962     Document Type: Article

References (132)

1. For early statements on space policy see documents in John M. Logsdon et al., eds., Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program (Washington, D.C.: NASA History Office, 1995), Vol. 1, pp. 345 -372.
2. There is a vast literature on the history and objectives of the American space program. Some of the best general histories are Walter McDougall, ... The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic, 1986);
3. James L. Kauffman, Selling Outer Space: Kennedy, the Media, and Funding for Project Apollo, 1961-1963 (Tuscaloosa: Univ. Alabama Press, 1994);
4. Roger D. Launius, NASA: A History of the U.S. Civil Space Program (Malabar, Fla.: Krieger, 1994);
5. and Logsdon, The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1970).
6. For the epigraph see President's Scientific Advisory Committee, "Introduction to Outer Space," 26 Mar. 1958, p. 6;
7. rpt. in James R. Killian, Jr., Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower: A Memoir of the First Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977), pp. 288-299.
8. Paul Edwards and Lily Kay have offered particularly compelling examples of how the imperatives of Cold War political culture became embedded in the language of scientific ideas. See Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996);
9. and Lily E. Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 2000).
10. The history of exobiology and attempts to locate life outside of earth are addressed in Steven J. Dick's excellent The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996).
11. Ian Hacking, "Weapons Research and the Form of Scientific Knowledge," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 1986, 12(Suppl):237-262;
12. Stuait W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military-IndustrialAcademic Complex at MIT and Stanford (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1993);
13. and Paul Forman, "Behind Quantum. Electronics: National Security as Basis for Physical Research in the United States, 1940-1960," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 1987, 18:149-229. Scholarly attention to links between postwar science and Cold War institutions has multiplied since the publication of these works.
14. As an introduction see the essays by Roger Geiger, Paul Forman, and Ronald Doel in Science After '40, ed. Arnold Thackray, Osiris, 1992, 2nd Ser., 7;
15. Rebecca Lowen, Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1997);
16. Robert Bud and Philip Gummett, eds., Cold War, Hot Science: Applied Research in Britain's Defense Laboratories, 1945-1990 (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1999);
17. and Michael Aaron Dennis, '"Our First Line of Defense': Two University Laboratories in the Postwar American State," Isis, 1994, 85:427-455.
18. See also two recent biographies of major scientific managers: G. Pascal Zachary, Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century (New York: Free Press, 1997);
19. and Allan Needell, Science, Cold War, and the American State: Lloyd V. Berkner and the Balance of Professional Ideals (Amsterdam: Harwood, 2000).
20. Ronald E. Doel, "Scientists as Policymakers, Advisors, and Intelligence Agents: Linking Contemporary Diplomatic History with the History of Contemporary Science," in The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology, ed. Thomas Söderqvist (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1997), pp. 215-244;
21. and Needell, Science, Cold War, and the American State.
22. For more on the notion of the "open society," especially in relation to the space program, see McDougall, Heavens and the Earth (cit. n. 1).
23. In Mar. 1958 the PSAC published a best-selling pamphlet, "Introduction to Outer Space" (cit. n. 1). The pamphlet offered four compelling reasons to pursue space exploration aggressively: the "urge to explore," national defense, national prestige, and opportunities for scientific research. Declassified portions of the minutes of PSAC meetings during the Eisenhower administration have been released on microfilm as The Papers of the President's Scientific Advisory Committee, 1957-1960, ed. Alex Roland (Bethesda, Md.: Univ. Publications America, 1986).
24. For the final recommendations of the National Aeronautics and Space Council see "U.S. Policy on Outer Space," 26 Jan. 1960, rpt. in Exploring the Unknown, ed. Logsdon et al. (cit. n. 1), Vol. 1, pp. 362-375.
25. The Committee on Bioastronautics was jointly sponsored by the Armed Forces and consisted of career military officers as well as civilian academic scientists. A complete list of members and panels can be found in the folder marked AF/NRC Committee on Bioastronautics, Relationships, Space Science Board Papers (hereafter SSB Papers), Archives of the National Academy of Sciences (hereafter NAS Archives), Washington, D.C During its two-year existence the committee published three issues of a newsletter: Bioastronotes Newsletter, AF/NRC Committee on Bioastronautics, NAS Archives.
26. This is not to say, of course, that the SSB recommendations for experiments held the most sway among space agencies. For official histories of space science see Homer Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1980);
27. and John E. Naugle, First among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1991).
28. "National Academy of Sciences Establishes Space Science Board," 3 Aug. [1958], Beginning of Program, SSB Papers;
29. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere, pp. 12, 120; Lloyd Berkner to Edward Tatum, 9 Sept. 1958, WESTEX Ad hoc, Committees, SSB Papers (the same letter was also sent to Howard Curtis, L. E. Farr, E. F. MacNichol, and Otto Schmitt);
30. and Ross Peavey to Berkner, 3 Mar. 1960, Reorganization, Psychological and Biological Research, SSB Papers (similar comments are ubiquitous in SSB correspondence).
31. Joshua Lederberg, interview by Audra Wolfe, Rockefeller Univ., 19 Aug. 2000 (Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, Oral History Transcript no. 0199).
32. E. F. MacNichol to Berkner, 29 Sept. 1958, Psychological and Biological Research Membership, Committees, SSB Papers;
33. and Berkner to Detlev Bronk, 5 Jan. 1962, Reorganization, 1961-1962, SSB Papers. Aside from exobiology and man-in-space research, the life sciences never really found a niche in either NASA or the SSB;
34. see Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere (cit. n. 7), pp. 274-282.
35. Joshua Lederberg to Berkner, 29 Sept. 1959, Lederberg to Hugh Odishaw, 26 Oct. 1959, SSB Correspondence 9-12/59;
36. and Lederberg to Odishaw, 3 Jan. 1961, SSB Committee 16, Bioastronautics 1960 (Life Sciences Committee): Box 28, Joshua Lederberg Papers (hereafter Lederberg Papers), National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland. Since this collection is still being accessioned, box numbers are subject to change. I have cited the boxes as I found them in July 2000 and Oct. 2001. Portions of the Lederberg papers are available on the NLM's Profiles in Science website: http://www.profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB (hereafter Profiles in Science).
37. Berkner made this argument on several occasions, most notably in an open letter to the President's Special Advisor for Science and Technology, George Kistiakowsky: Berkner to George Kistiakowsky, 13 Nov. 1959, PSAC, SSB Papers.
38. Lederberg interview (cit. n. 9) (Lederberg recounted the same story in interviews with Susan Lindee and Steven J. Dick and in his personal notes for an autobiography);
39. and "Addendum, to Minutes of the Meeting of the Council of the National Academy of Sciences on February 8, 1958," Man in Space, Box 26, Lederberg Papers.
40. WESTEX Minutes, 21 Feb. 1959, WESTEX Ad hoc, Committees, SSB Papers (most, but not all, WESTEX minutes can be found in this folder);
41. for the names see WESTEX Membership Roster, Oct. 1960, Exobiology, Committees, SSB Papers. For EASTEX records see EASTEX Meetings, Cambridge, 1958, SSB Papers.
42. "Development of International Efforts to Avoid Contamination of Extraterrestrial Bodies," Science, 1958, 128:887-889.
43. Norman Horowitz, "Space Research and the Problem of the Origin of Life," WESTEX 1-e, WESTEX Ad hoc, Committees, SSB Papers. For an explanation of panspermia and other theories of the origin of life (both terrestrial and extraterrestrial) see Harmke Kamminga, "Histories of Theories of the Origin of Life" (Ph.D. thesis, Chelsea College, London Univ., 1981);
44. James E. Strick, Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000);
45. and Dick, Biological Universe (cit. n. 2), Ch. 7: "The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Extraterrestrial Context."
46. "Contamination of a Planetary Surface by Interplanetary Missiles," WESTEX 1-b, WESTEX Ad hoc, Committees, SSB Papers; Horowitz, "Space Research";
47. and Lederberg, "Working Paper," WESTEX Ad hoc, Committees, SSB Papers. For a discussion of the evolutionary synthesis, the unity of life,
48. and exobiology see Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 172-174.
49. On the history of molecular biology during this time period see Soraya de Chaderevian and Jean-Paul Gaudilliere, eds., The Tools of the Discipline: Biochemists and MolecularBiologists, Journal of the History of Biology, 1996, 29(3);
50. Horace Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979);
51. Lily E. Kay, The Molecular Vision of Life: CalTech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993);
52. Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life? (cit. n. 2);
53. Robert Olby, The Path to the Double Helix (London: Macmillan, 1974);
54. and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997).
55. Berkner to Bronk, 5 Jan. 1962, Reorganization 1961-1962, SSB Papers. Even so, discussions of space biology filled only one chapter of the SSB's summary of the possibilities of space science. See Lloyd V. Berkner and Hugh Odishaw, Science in Space (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961).
56. C. S. Pittendrigh to Berkner, 31 Dec. 1961, Berkner Correspondence, Box 13, H. Keffer Hartline Papers, Rockefeller Archives Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York; and "Call for Meeting," 26 Sept. 1959, WESTEX Ad hoc, Committees, SSB Papers.
57. Pittendrigh to Berkner, 31 Dec. 1961; "Grant Establishes Biomedical Instrumentation Laboratory," Stanford Medical Center Memo, 10 Oct. 1962, p. 1;
58. and NASA "Biomedical Instrumentation Lab" newsletter, 1962, Box 28, Lederberg Papers. See also James Strick, "NASA, the Cold War, and the 'Nucleic Acid Monopoly' : Sidney Fox, Stanley Miller, and Origin of Life Research, 1953-1972," paper presented at the History of Science Society annual meeting, Pittsburgh, Nov. 1999.
59. In his memoirs, T. Keith Glennan, NASA's first administrator, dismisses the SSB as an advisory group, commenting that the "board had a strong urge to run the program": J. D. Hunley, ed., The Birih of NASA: The Diary of T. Keith Glennan (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1993), p. 30.
60. Joshua Lederberg, "Moondust," Science, 1958, 127:1473-1475;
61. Lederberg, "Exobiology: Approaches to Life beyond the Earth," ibid, 1960, 132:393-400;
62. Edward Anders, "The Moon as Collector of Biological Material," ibid., 1961, 133:1115-1116;
63. and Lederberg and Carl Sagan, "Microenvironments for Life on Mars," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1962, 48:1473-1475. These articles all reflect discussions at WESTEX meetings, as can. be surmised both from their acknowledgments and from the texts themselves.
64. Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain (New York: Knopf, 1969).
65. H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (London, 1898);
66. and Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958).
67. For the figures see Brian Holmsten and Alex Lubertozzi, eds., The Complete War of the Worlds: Mars' Invasion of Earth from H. G. Wells to Orson Welles (Naperville, 111.: Sourcebooks Media Fusion, 2001), p. 6.
68. One example of the "standard tropes," which appear often in WESTEX papers, can be found in Joshua Lederberg, "Working Paper, March 10, 1959," WESTEX 2-a, Request for Support, Proposals 1958-1959, SSB Papers.
69. WESTEX 5-c, Paraphrase of Communication, from Aaron. Novick, 19 Feb. 1959; and Joshua Lederberg, draft, "Aims of Space Exploration," 20 Feb. 1960, WESTEX 5-d: WESTEX Ad hoc, Committees, SSB Papers.
70. "Danger from Space?" Time, 17 Nov. 1961, p. 76;
71. "Life Detector," ibid., 30 Aug. 1963, p. 52;
72. "Life Detectors," Newsweek, 30 Sept. 1963, p. 56;
73. "Somebody Up There Like Us?" Esquire, Dec. 1963, pp. 185-187;
74. New York Times, 6 July 1958, 30 Sept. 1958, 4 Sept. 1959, 14 Sept. 1959, 4 May 1960, 3 May 1960 ('"extremely doubtful possibility'");
75. Los Angeles Examiner, 20 Mar. 1960;
76. and New York World-Telegram and Sun, 4 May 1960.
77. "Influenza fra universet," unlabeled magazine clipping dated 24 June 1960, Box 26, Lederberg Papers.
78. "Danger from Space?" (cit. n. 26), p. 76;
79. and "Life Detector" (cit. n. 26), p. 52.
80. "Danger from Space?" p. 76;
81. and "Life Detector," p. 52. For the classic study of the culture of science writing see Dorothy Nelkin, Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology (New York: Freeman, 1987).
82. "Danger from Space?" p. 76. Foreign and internal Cold War anxieties played a crucial role in the construction of the domestic ideal of the 1950s and 1960s. See Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic, 1988).
83. For a discussion of the curious intersection of domestic gender roles and space travel on television see Lynn Spigel, "From Domestic Space to Outer Space: The 1960s Fantastic Family Sitcom," in Close Encounters: Film, Feminism, and Science Fiction, ed. Constance Penley, Elisabeth Lyon, Spigel, and Janet Bergstrom. (Minneapolis: Univ. Minnesota Press, 1991), pp. 205-235.
84. WESTEX Memo, 26 Jan. 1960, WESTEX Ad hoc, Committees, SSB Papers;
85. Joshua Lederberg, "Plague from Planets," Senior Scholastic, 17 Feb. 1960, p. 22;
86. and Lederberg, "Are There Bugs on Mars?" Washington Post, 26 Feb. 1967.
87. Lederberg served as a weekly columnist for the Washington Post between 1966 and 1972.
88. Odishaw to Lederberg, 22 June 1961, SSB Correspondence 6-8/61, Box 28, Lederberg Papers. In 1960 Horowitz wrote Lederberg an outraged letter describing a television program he had seen on NBC The documentary featured Glennan, as well as other NASA officials, and emphasized man-in-space. According to Horowitz, this "very foolish and harmful program" ignored all aspects of space science "except, of course, the possibility of communicating with intelligent beings on other planets.... The possibility of detecting nonintelligent life was not mentioned, naturally." Norman Horowitz to Lederberg, 16 May 1960, Profiles in Science. He continued his description a few days later, additionally arguing that the program, offered an opportunity for the SSB to pressure Glennan into placing more emphasis on actual science. Horowitz to Lederberg, 19 May 1960, Profiles in Science.
89. "Xenobiology" is suggested in Harold Wooster, Letter, Science, 1961, 134:223-225.
90. Dick's Biological Universe (cit. n. 2) contains an extensive discussion of the history of SETI programs (pp. 414-454).
91. See also I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan, Intelligent Life in the Universe, trans. Paula Fern (New York: Dell, 1966).
92. George Gaylord Simpson, "The Nonprevalence of Humanoids," Science, 1964, 143:769-775.
93. Ibid., p. 775.
94. On scientific cooperation programs in general see Alexander Keynan, "The Political Impact of Scientific Cooperation on Nations in Conflict: An Overview," in Scientific Cooperation, State Conflict: The Roles of Scientists in Mitigating International Discord, ed. Allison L. C. De Cerreño and Keynan (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 866) (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1998), pp. 1-54.
95. The Pugwash Conferences exemplify this practice. See Joseph Rotblat, Scientists and the Quest for Peace: A History of the Pugwash Conferences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), for an official history; for a post-Cold War study of the practices of Pugwash in the case of biological and chemical warfare
96. see J. P. Perry Robinson, "The Impact of Pugwash on the Debates over Chemical and Biological Weapons," in Scientific Cooperation, State Conflict, ed. De Cerreflo and Keynan, pp. 224-252. On a successful initiative
97. see Alan McDonald, "Scientific Cooperation as a Bridge across the Cold War Divide: The Case of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)," ibid., pp. 55-83.
98. Doel, "Scientists as Policymakers" (cit. n. 4), p. 216. The International Geophysical Year was a nominally international effort to further upper atmospheric research, including the launching of satellites. Though they should be regarded as primary rather than secondary sources, basic histories of the IGY can be found in Sydney Chapman, IGY: Year of Discovery (Ann Arbor: Univ. Michigan Press, 1959);
99. and Walter Sullivan, Assault on the Unknown: The International Geophysical Year (New York: McGraw Hill, 1961).
100. Needell offers a sophisticated view of the project in Science, Cold War, and the American State (cit. n. 3), Ch. 11: "Berkner and the IGY," pp. 297-323.
101. McDougall explores the implications for international law in Heavens and the Earth (cit. n. 1).
102. Lloyd Berkner, Science and Foreign Relations: International Flow of Scientific and Technological Information, Publication. No. 3860 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, May 1950);
103. and Needell, Science, Cold War, and the American State, pp. 144-148. Needell successfully requested the declassification of this document.
104. See note 17, above, for histories of molecular biology. The classic accounts of Lysenkoism were written by Soviet scientists deeply mired in the conflict. See David Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1970);
105. Zhores A. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko, trans. I. Michael Lerner (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1969);
106. and Valery N. Soyfer, Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science, trans. Leo Gruliow and Rebecca Gruliow (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1994).
107. Nikolai Krementsov approaches the topic with more historical distance and sophistication in Stalinist Science (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1997).
108. Soviet genetics in the 1950s and 1960s was not nearly as barren as most Americans thought it to be. Institutions that camouflaged their research under other names were particularly successful in harboring researchers in molecular biology and genetics.
109. See Mark B. Adams, "Genetics and the Soviet Scientific Community, 1948-1965" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard Univ., 1972).
110. Many of these projects are currently in process and remain unpublished as yet. Gerard Fitzgerald's dissertation research has thus far provided the most evidence of an extensive program of offensive biological weapons development within the universities. Initial reports include Gerard Fitzgerald, "Mechanization through Standardization: Bacteriological Engineers and Biological Weapons at LOBUND, 1928-1955," paper presented at the History of Science Society annual meeting, Vancouver, 3 Nov. 2000;
111. and Fitzgerald, "In the Shadow of the Atom.: United States Biological Weapons Research, 1940-1955," paper presented at "Cold War Science, Technology, and Medicine: Global Perspectives Conference," 10 Nov. 2000, Philadelphia.
112. Bioastmnotes Newsletter, nos. 1-3, Bioastronotes, AF/NRC Committee on Bioastronautics, NAS Archives;
113. and Lederberg to George Derbyshire, 29 Mar. 1960, Relationships, AF/NRC Committee on Bioastronautics, SSB Papers. Calvin unfortunately does not discuss his membership on the Committee on Bioastronautics in his autobiography: Melvin Calvin, Following the Trail of Light: A Scientific Odyssey (Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1992).
114. For the most complete discussion of the relationship between, the military and civilian branches of the space program, including references to recently declassified documents, see Mark A. Erickson, "The Evolution of the NASA-DoD Relationship from Sputnik to the Lunar Landing" (Ph.D. diss., George Washington Univ., 1997).
115. "Sterility of the Cosmic Rocket," translation from 15 Sept. 1959 issue of Pravda, WESTEX 4/17 1959, Box 26, Lederberg Papers (Lederberg circulated this translation to WESTEX members shortly after he received it from Kinkead, 27 Nov. 1959);
116. "Abstract of letter from Carl Sagan summarizing conversation with G. F. Gause (11/59)," WESTEX 4/18 1959, Box 26, Lederberg Papers;
117. and Lederberg to .Novick, 3 Nov. 1959, Novick to Lederberg, 10 Nov. 1959, Lederberg to Novick, 27 Nov. 1959: Profiles in Science.
118. For Lederberg's attempts to send WESTEX minutes to Iemsalimskii see Lederberg to Derbyshire, 23 Nov. 1959;
119. for the response see Derbyshire (SSB Secretariat) to Lederberg, 12 Dec. 1959 (Derbyshire conveyed Odishaw's opinion through this letter): SSB Correspondence 9-12/59, Box 28, Lederberg Papers. For his letter to Timakov
120. see Lederberg to V. D. Timakov, 16 May 1958, Correspondence, Exobiology, Box 26, Lederberg Papers. An effort to include Soviet scientists in exobiology meetings can be found in WESTEX Call for Meeting, 26 Sept. 1959, WESTEX Ad hoc, Committees, SSB Papers. Lederberg's report on Imshenetski is in Lederberg to Derbyshire, 23 Apr. 1960, WESTEX/NASAX Correspondence 1960, Box 26, Lederberg Papers. Lederberg also inquired whether the Russian [sic] delegation would participate in the COSPAR Symposium at Nice, writing, "My (all our) interest in attending was predicated on this": Lederberg to Derbyshire, 23 Nov. 1959, SSB Correspondence 9-12/59, Box 28, Lederberg Papers. See also Lederberg to Derbyshire, 25 Sept. 1961, SSB Correspondence 9-12/61, Box 28, Lederberg Papers, where Lederberg reports on a successful conversation with Academician Sisakyian and suggests that informal, but planned, conferences based on the Pugwash model might offer better opportunities for cooperation in exobiology.
121. Lederberg to Berkner, 13 July 1959, SSB Correspondence 7-8/59, Box 28, Lederberg Papers; and Lederberg to Bob Jastrow, approx. 21 Feb. 1959, WESTEX 3, Box 26, Lederberg Papers. Lederberg was quite enthusiastic in his recommendation of the Fort Derrick microbiologists, referring to their "unequalled experience in the disinfection area": Lederberg to Berkner, 13 July 1959. See his additional endorsements in Lederberg to Bruno Rossi, 21 Feb. 1959, SSB Correspondence 2/59, and Lederberg to Rossi, 3 Mar. 1959, SSB Correspondence 3/59: Box 28, Lederberg Papers;
122. and Lederberg to Jastrow, approx. 21 Feb. 1959, and Lederberg to Derbyshire, 4 May 1959: WESTEX 3, Box 26, Lederberg Papers. This plan was presented to the public in Charles R. Phillips and Robert K. Hoffman, "Sterilization of Interplanetary Vehicles," Science, 1960, 132:991-995.
123. Note that after Aug. 1959 decontamination was no longer "the most urgent problem": Lederberg to Derbyshire, 12 Aug. 1959, SSB Correspondence 7-8/59, Box 28, Lederberg Papers. In an interview, Lederberg suggested that the CETEX agreements ended the need for further discussion of the decontamination issue. When I asked him whether NASA actually contracted with Fort Derrick to build decontamination devices, Lederberg replied, "I don't remember the outcome. ... I don't believe that they actually ever participated dramatically in the effort, but I can't be sure about that." Lederberg interview (cit. n. 9).
124. Lederberg to John A. O'Keefe, 29 Mar. 1960 (survivorship of bacteria);
125. and Lederberg to Charles R. Phillips, 18 Feb. 1960, 27 May 1960, 29 July 1960, 26 Sept. 1960, 14 Nov. 1960: Profiles in Science.
126. Horowitz to Derbyshire, 2 Mar. 1960, WESTEX Ad hoc, Committees, SSB Papers. One has to read between the lines to surmise motivations behind the sterilization/contamination controversy. Although their reasons are never spelled out, Berkner, Odishaw, and Lederberg disagreed on what NASA's position toward decontamination should be, especially in international agreements. Berkner and Odishaw refer vaguely to "legal commitments" and "State lawyers."
127. See the correspondence between Lederberg, Berkner, and Odishaw, as well as memos from Derbyshire to Odishaw, in SSB Correspondence, 7-8/59 and 9-12/59, Box 28, Lederberg Papers.
128. Lederberg to Audra Wolfe, 4 Apr. 2001. Krementsov describes the decree from the Central Committee, "On the Responsibility for Disclosure of State Secrets," in Stalinist Science (cit. n. 39), p. 141.
129. Yet, as Walter McDougall explains, even that treaty allowed the continued development of satellite and surveillance technologies in space. See McDougall, Heavens and the Earth (cit. n. 1), pp. 415-420.
130. I find it telling that more than one surviving WESTEX member expressed surprise at the suggestion, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation might have maintained a file on him. For the record, none of the surviving scientists involved with WESTEX have granted me permission to request these potential files, which is, of course, their prerogative. The FBI will neither confirm nor deny the existence of personal files without the permission of a living individual. Considering that many of these scientists held public appointments, and most traveled extensively, it is likely that such, files exist.
131. Lederberg to Wolfe, 4 Apr. 2001; Norman Horowitz to Wolfe, 11 Apr. 2001;
132. and Matthew Meselson to Wolfe, 18 Apr. 2001.