Robert G. Loeffler, M.D.
9521 Woodington Drive
Potomac, MD
20854
July 23, 1980
ACYLO
Mr. Richard D. Copaken
Covington & Burling
888 Sixteenth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
20006
Dear Richard,
.
I have had the opportumity to review the most recent commmication fron
Wallace 0. Green, Deputy Under Secretary, Territorial and International
Affairs, to President Amata Kabua, wherein certain "clarifications" are
detailed by Mr. Bruce W. Wachholz, germane to the proposed agreement of
March 27, 1980 for the medical survey of the inhabitants of Likiep
Atoll. I find these clarifications most welcome since they specify, to
a degree, the proposed "biochemical screening profile".
Before commenting specifically on them, I must appraise you of same
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.
It is blatantly clear that interpretation of biochemical analyses re-
quires 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 normal
standard reference, could not be meaningfully interpreted for two reasons:
1)
The data obtained varied considerably from established
norms, and
2) ~ the quantity of data collected was not large enough to
be statistically significant.
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
A