MARINE SCIENCE 167 
Previous successes in the application of naturally occurring substances derived 
from terrestrial organisms to the study of normal physiological processes and 
to the treatment of disease should encourage similar studies with marine plants 
and animals. It is anticipated that much knowledge of medical and scientific 
importance would result from expanded support of the study of the pharmaco- 
logical actions of substances derived from marine organisms. 
STATEMENT BY Dr. MAry BELLE ALLEN, Director, LABORATORY OF COMPARATIVE 
BrioLogy, Kaiser FOUNDATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE, RICHMOND, CALIF. 
Marcu 16, 1961. 
Senator WARREN G. MAGNUSON, 
New Senate Office Building, 
Washington, D.C. 
DEAR SENATOR Magnuson : Thank you for the invitation to comment on 8. 901. 
Needless to say, all of us who are working in the marine sciences are keenly 
interested in this bill and hope for its passage. 
The pharmacological possibilities of material from marine plants, animals, 
and microorganisms are to a great extent unexplored. The work which has so 
far been done, however, suggests that the sea is a great storehouse of potential 
chemotherapeutic agents. Several common seaweeds are yielding antibiotics 
active against various bacteria, including the troublesome Staphylococcus aureus. 
The numerous venomous or otherwise poisonous animals found in tropical seas 
are also being found to contain a variety of pharmacologically active materials. 
There is every reason to believe that increased work in this area would be profit- 
able to medical science. 
May I also take this opportunity to comment on two other matters that may 
be of interest to your committee? (1) There is a great lack of basic ocean- 
ographie data for the northern California region. The Scripps Institution has 
worked south from San Diego, and the University of Washington north from 
Seattle, leaving an unstudied area in between. (2) Our competitors in the 
Soviet Union are employing a large number of scientists of both sexes in ocean- 
ographic fieldwork. We, on the other hand, have so far been employing mostly 
males. Most of our ship and field facilities are designed or operated in such a 
way as to discourage work by women. Since we have in this country a number 
of highly competent scientific women both able and willing to do work of this 
type, is it not wasteful of our human resources to permit this situation to 
continue? 
Sincerely yours, 
Mary BELLE ALLEN, Ph. D., Director. 
STATEMENT OF ALBERT SZENT-GyYORGYI, M.D., PH. D., LABORATORY OF THE INSTI- 
TUTE FOR MUSCLE RESEARCH AT THE MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY, WOODS 
Hote, MASS. 
Marcu 4, 1961. 
Senator WARREN G. MAGNUSON, 
Senate Office Building, 
Washington, D.C. 
Dear SENATOR MaGnuson: You invite me to expand on my earlier statement. 
There is one point, perhaps, which I may not have sufficiently emphasized in my 
earlier letter, and this is the unity of the living world and science. For many 
decades the trend was to subdivide nature and science into new fields. Now 
we begin to understand the great unity of Nature, which is built on a limited 
number of basic principles. The difference is very important. Earlier, we 
thought we would be able to solve more complex problems, such as different 
diseases, by a direct attack, by shortcuts. Shortcuts have turned out to be 
blind alleys and we have learned that the only really safe and fruitful way is 
to go down, first, to the foundations of Nature (this is basic research), and then 
come up with our newly won deeper insight to the specific areas. To quote an 
example of my specific personal experience, I always was interested, exclusively, 
in basic phenomena. All the same, unexpectedly, 30 years ago I discovered 
vitamin CG, which, since, has saved many lives and has helped to build millions 
of healthy bodies. Though not being a cancer researcher, I could make, lately, 
a very important contribution to cancer research, and I hope that, someday, my 
basie studies on muscle will yield a clue to dystrophy. I would almost be in- 
