If you go to the hospital you see that you can make a statement like this. there are many such births now. Crippled births, that is little children and infants that have birth defects. Bair: Are you sure that there are more than occur naturally? Because in any population almost 11% of live births result in some defect. more than 1 out of 10. Buck: That is a very high number. Two people say yes, we have more incidence Marshallese: That is of this than before. We feel that there has been an increase. We just see that there has been more and I just really doubt that you could really say that the Yapees have the same rate of birth defects as any other group of people or that the Marshalls have no more than other people. how you can make a statement like that. I really can’t see Is it actually SO? !3air: That was the data in the report that I saw. I have not seen more recent data that would suggest otherwise. Buck: That was in 1978? Bair: I think it was 1978. Buck : Why don’t we make such a study so that we could have these figures and see if there has been an increase or not? Bair: I assume that health data are being collected in the Marshall Islands and in the other territories. These data could be compared anytime. Marshallese: Would it be good to inc’ ude information Ike that in this booklet so that people from the outer atolls could have also had that information? That kind of report has not been included in here. 15