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