The issue that is of great importance to discuss at this point, requires that I go back a few years to pick up the story, and that is that I've emphasized several times the enormous demands for cell cultures that were made by people in the United States and Europe. And it soon became apparent that I was spending, and my technical helpers were spending an enormous amount of time and energy, and funds as well, Wistar overhead funds, which was indirectly supporting our work, such that my time that I wanted to use for my regular work was diminishing. At about this time, in fact it was rather early on, a fellow who I had known for many years, a cell culturist, who... who worked at the National Institutes of Health, a man by the name of Robert Stevenson, who was also a cell culture pioneer, but by this time he had an administrative job at the NIH. He was very influential in promoting the cell culture activities throughout the United States.

Because my cell cultures, WI-38 and WI-26, were used widely at the NIH, a government facility, of course, and by many government grantees who were now dependent on these cells for their research activities, made the demand for the cells actually skyrocket. Bob Stevenson came to me one day, I knew him personally, of course, from former meetings on tissue culture subjects, and Bob said, 'Len, look, we know that you're struggling to keep up with the demand for these cells, and it's apparent to you and to me that the NIH and our grantees are dependent on you as a source of these cells for their work. What about my preparing a contract for you – and the title of the contract is important, as will be shown later – to produce, store, and distribute? Those are the key three words – produce, store, and distribute – your cell cultures to properly qualified folks in the research, not only in the United States but even worldwide, as I recall the contract later was interpreted to cover. But this was a windfall because now, and of course this did indeed happen, I had funds, sufficient to hire another technician whose sole job it would be to prepare cultures, package them and ship them, and that was a big relief.

It's important to note at this point, the contract did not cover the development of a cell culture. It did not cover the research that went into it. It did not cover anything other than storing the ampoules, distributing them, and producing enough to meet the demand. And this will become an important issue later on.