Robinson Memorial Hospital
Ravenna, Ohio ##.266

HORE &

July 27, 1981

Dr. D. E. Paglia, Professor
Division of Surgical Pathology
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Dear Dr. Paglia;
Thank you very much for your material on the Marshallese Islanders.

I confess that I did not think that such a review committee would serve
any particularly useful purpose; nor did I think that such agreement could be
achieved.
There was, indeed, some arm-twisting, but this was minor and, all

in all, I admit I was wrong.

(I have been wrong before.)

May I congratulate you on the succinct presentation you have prepared.
My own version having been subjected to multiple emendations te satisfy various
reviewers, I do not propose to inflict the same on you.
Indeed, there is
nothing much that I would quarrel with, in any event.
(1 am interested that
you, as well as Dr. Woolner, I think it was, know what a "true neoplasm"
really is; I remain with Virchow, ignorant of this.)
While the findings of the Review Committee should satisfy the need for a
united front, and while, indeed, I think they represent an honest concensus
of opinion, the fact remains that in the course of the past ten years, multiple
diagnoses, apparently different, were offered by these same géntlemen, and I
am still exploring the reasons why.
I think they are mainly conceptual and
interpretive, rather than objective and observational.
I was a little disappointed that your own comments on the very first

discussion did not get further aired.

If I understood your drift correctly,

you were proposing that factual descriptions should first be written; and that
diagnostic terminology, which includes opinions on probable behavior, should be
considered later.
Even if I am mistaken in your meaning, this would have
seemed to me an interesting exercise with so many experts assembled.
I think your finished product is much superior to the previous effort and
you deserve thanks all around.
Kind regards.
Yours sincerely,
a-y a
. f
é

John D. Reid,

Pathologist
JDR/drts
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Dr.

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Conard
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M.D.

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