2 salt Re SESSION If FREMONT-SMITH: 1z] The genetic, too. EISENBUD: What's known about consanguinity in this group? CONARD: This is a good point. We've gone into that auc it turns out that these people probably do have a somewhat greater degree of consanguinity than we do, but in the exposed group we cnecked the number of firat-cousia marriages and second-cousin marriages and this sort of thing and fouid that actually they had a lower rate of consanguineous marriage than occurred in a comparison p-pulation. This also has bearing on growth and development because the children of consanguineous marriages are known to be scmewhat retarded. SCHULL: It might also have a bearing on the findiry of increased percentages of abortions. If the latter reflects immunoicgi: incompatibility between mother and fetus, fewer abortions would be expected among the pregnancies of consanguineously marr-ed individuals than among those of unrelated spouses. , EISENBUD: I don't see how they car get away fren their cousins on a small island like that. [don't ‘Sink they are compietely inbred. Do th. y mix up much with the other islands? [Laughter] ROOT: I had heard that they had a low birth rate and that's why the custom of adopting other children into families had arisen. CONARD: lt may be true from the point of view of infant mortality which up until more recently has been quite high, but now we have brought in better medical care, and so forth, and the infant mortality is greatly reduced. Bu* thev do adopt children, tos. Now I would like to discuss the most serious finding in the Marshallese, thatis the development of the thyroid abnormalities. Until 1963 we had thought that these people had normal thyroid glands. We had already detected this lag in grow-h and develapment in exposed boys and we really didn't have any explanation for it. We carried out numerous thyroid tests and so-called PBI (protein-bound iodine) tests of the blood, which are good indications ofthyroid activity, ee You mean sma! transfusions? te FREMONT-SMITH: ee ee CONARD: Yes, there's quite a bit of communication with other islands and people come in and bring in fresh blood! [Laughter]