Attachment #1
Robert G. Loeffler, M.D.
9521 Woodington Drive
Potomac, MD 20854
July 23, 1980
Mr. Richard D. Copaken
Covington & Burling
888 Sixteenth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
20006
_ Dear Richard,
I have had the opportunity to review the most recent commmication fron
Wallace O. Green, Deputy Under Secretary, Territorial and International
fairs, to President Amata Kabua, wherein certain “clarifications” are
Getailed by Mr. Bruce W. Wachholz, german; to the proposed agreement of
March 27, 1980 for the medical survey of the inhabitants of Likiep
Atoll.
I find these clarifications most welcame since they specify, to
a degree, the proposed "biochenical screening profile".
Before commenting specifically on then, I must appraise you of sate
general considerations in light of our April 23, 1980 meeting with
representattives of the Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven National
Laboratory (BNL), and the Department of Interior.
I also found this
meeting helpful and informative, specifically discussions with Dr.
Pratt, whose extensive medical experience and data gathering at the
Marshall Islands clearly detailed major foreseeable difficulties with
the proposed studies by the Department of Interior and the Department of
Energy.
.
ee
It is blatantly clear that interpretation of biochemical analyses requires a reference standard of comparison normal values.
Simply put,
such a normal standard currently does not exist for the Marshallese
population at large.
Dr. Pratt informed us that several prior attempts
of gathering biochemical and hematological data from populations in the
Marshall Islands, other than Rongelap and Utirik, to be used as nomml
Standard reference, could not be meaningfully interpreted for two reasons:
1)
‘The data obtained varied considerably from established
2)
the quantity of data collected was not large enough to
be statistically significant.
noms, and
The March 27 proposal, as you know, plans on studying Likiep Atoll and
one other atoll, as a “comparison population".
I find it difficult to