Dr. Donald Fredrickson, Director 
- 2 - 
January 4, 1978 
"The diptheria toxin is a chemical so closely related to 
a component of our own cells involved in protein synthesis 
that it's mistaken for that by the cell and locks onto a 
part of the apparatus for making proteins and shuts the 
process off. But in order to make that toxin the diptheria 
bacillus itself has to have been infected by a virus. A 
perfectly healthy diptheria bacillus is innocuous. It's 
not until it has been invaded by a phage... and has 
incorporated the genetic content of the phage into its 
own genetic content that it has the information for 
making diptheria toxin. There has been speculation that the 
information that comes in by way of the phage may itself 
have come long ago from eukaryotic cells... To a degree, 
therefore, it looks as though some infectious diseases 
were really accidents — biological accidents'." (Dr. Thomas, 
in "The New Yorker", p. 40.) 
Containment criteria for an organism producing a toxic 
product has been clarified. . .many toxins are the end- 
products of a complex set of biochemical reactions ... In 
these cases, the danger of inadvertantly cloning the toxin- 
producing mechanism into E_. coli is virtually nil. There- 
fore, if proof exists that a toxin is of this category, the 
containment may reasonably be lowered to that of a related 
organism that does not produce a toxin. (Background... 
p. 36.) 
"...rheumatic fever is an after affect of a specific 
streptococcus ... "There is something bizarre about the 
illness .. .When rheumatic fever develops, it does not do 
so for ten days or two weeks after the first infection... 
by which time the original throat infection has already 
disappeared. . .The disease has some similarities to a gen- 
eralized allergic reaction ... It is as though the strepto- 
coccus infection had turned on some kind of highly inappro- 
priate immunological reaction, in which the host's own 
defense mechanisms have brought about damage to his organs — 
in this case the heart." (Dr. Thomas, in "The New Yorker", 
p. 36. ) 
"Most of the gram-negative organisms possess at their 
surfaces endotoxins that are incorporated into the sur- 
face wall and are released when the organism dies. Nobody 
really knows how an endotoxin works , but what it does when 
it is injected into animals, or when we are exposed to it 
through an infection, is to cause a complex series of 
reactions, any one of which would be classed as an 
[Appendix A — 184] 
