no longer desirable.
I am certified by the American
Boards
of Internal Medicine,
and am a Felilow of tne American
states
of California,
and
Occupational Medical Association.
Texas,
I am registered in the
Illinois to practice.
méGicine.
Finally, as part of my internal medical treining,
I did one year of intensive pathology.
Now for my observation:
I was immediately struck by
the remarkable frequency of visual difficulties and the
frequency of thyroid tumors.
The frequency of thyroid
tumors was shown by the examination of a number of patients
who demonstrated thyroidectomy scars; by the examination
of some hospital record, and most important by the history
of the people telling me of the epidemic of these Gisorders
on their islands.
Since the populations on the islands
varied from two hundred to more,
often,
particularly in
the smaller islands, the individuals who spoke to me
where able to give me a pretty fair idea of the number of
thyroid tumors and visual difficulties that appeared on
their island.
Since the nuclear explosions there has been a remarkable epidemic of thyroid tumors in the Marsnall Islands, --
to my knowledge a singular epidemic since I have never
seen its like before, -- starting aboyt fifteen years or
so after the onset of the atomic explosions, and continuing to the present.
Some of the victims apparently
were in thelr teens or pre-teens
during the explosicns
and were most characteristically female but some of the
Victims were probably not yet born at the time of the
explosion, although I do not have such a concise chrono-
legy that I can say this with ebsolute certainty.
1
recall seeing one patient young enough so that it would
be hardly likely that she would have been born curing the
explosions.
°
The thyroidectomy scars that I saw on these patients
were large scars, and for the most part it seems to me
that the entire thyroid had been removed.
This was borne