Recently, in connection with an ongoing medical study of certain
Marshall Islanders prompted by the Bikini incident (1), we have had the
opportunity to examine a sevies of blood samples
from these
Islanders
Pan tie ocenrrence of both polymorphisms and rare variants of serum
prateing and erythrocyte enuynes.
The results, when treated in the
USUAL fashion and comb ined with the findings of others on Micronesians,
.
.
there may be
susgest/& lower frequency of rare variants in this group than in such
groups as Japanese, Caucasians, or South American Indians.
There are
seme bothersome problems in comparisons across groups sampled in different
ways, however, which make the usual statistical contrasts impossible; some
of these problems are aired,
THE POPULATION
The study population is composed of persons now residing on Ebeye,
Rongelap, and Majuro Islands, for the most part related to one another as
embers of nuclear families.
The number of independent genomes in the
sample is thus considerably less than the number of persons.
Approximately
half of the children in the sample were born to parents inadvertently
radiated as a result of fall-out from a nuclear explosion at the time of
the Bikini test, in 1954.
However, as will be apparent under RESULTS,
the question of a radiation effect will not arise in any substantial
manner.
a TTT