"The Exploitation of the Bacillus Subtilis Transforming System
in a Bio-Satellite Experiment"
a Proposal by Esther M. Lederberg
Instrumentation Laboratory, Stanford, May 6, 1963

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Lederberg, Esther M. (as responsible experimenter), in collaboration with other members of the Genetics Department and the Instrumentation Laboratory at Stanford University, wrote the following proposal on May 6, 1963.

Dr. Joshua Lederberg improperly appropriated and improperly retained various papers and proposals of Esther Lederberg, as well as other research scientists. The following is claimed as Joshua Lederberg's on his NLM site.

Lederberg's urgent warnings about interstellar contamination, and his call for the scientific study of life beyond earth's atmosphere--for which he coined the term exobiology--tapped into popular fascination with the dawning of the space age, and brought him international media attention. "I was the only biologist at the time who seemed to take the idea of extraterrestrial exploration seriously," Lederberg remembered. "People were saying it would be a hundred years before we even got to the moon." He, however, "was convinced that once the first satellite was up the timetable would be very short, and [his] fear was that the space program would be pushed ahead for military and political reasons without regard for the scientific implications."

The proposal displayed here by Esther M. Lederberg goes beyond "exobiology" questions limited to contamination, and deals with survivability and genetic stability of exobiological micrbiological life. Was this proposal by Esther M. Lederberg purloined and buried for a reason? Was Joshua Lederberg the only scientific researcher concerned with these questions? At least, it is clear that there was a conflict of interest in Joshua Lederberg holding the position of director of Stanford University's Exobiology research program.

This specific piece of correspondence may be found on Joshua Lederberg's NLM website, identified as with the ID: bbgdge.
     http://profiles.NLM.NIH.gov/BB/

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