were exposed to the fallout, there is
cancer in those people.
I
a
much higher incidence of thyroid
think there were 7 in 1977, I don’t know how
many there are now.
Buck:
There were 7 cases of thyroid cancer.
Bair:
There were 7 cases of thyroid cancer in 239 Marshallese in 1977.
I
don’t know how many have occurred since then.
Muller:
In our
records,
I
I
think we have,
so cases of thyroid abnormality
feel we have heard about 460 or
in our population over this period; and, so
we think that our population is now something around 32,000.
So, that
seems to be much different than what you said, well actually Marshallese
population differs in no degree from say Yap in an incidence of thyroid
disorders.
Bair:
My number was only thyroid cancers.
thyroid abnormalities.
That is much different than the
There is no relationship that scientists know about
now between nodules and cancers.
They appear to be independent.
Different
populations around the world have different numbers of thyroid
abnormalities
different.
Muller:
but their incidence of cancer is not that different, is not
It is fairly uniform.
No, I was speaking about thyroid operations.
thyroid operations.
In Japaneserecords
There have been 460
of the time that they were in the
Marshall Islands, we’ve checked those, and the number of incidence
of
thyroid disorders during that time was not near what it has been now in
this recent time in our records.
Bair:
That is probably because you are more concerned about thyroid
abnormalities
and so you are looking harder for them.
And when
you look
harder for something you find more of them.
Muller:
Well, I have not conducted any vast research in this subject so
it’s not because of my interest or lack of interest that these figures seem
to be this way, but thank you for your reply.
57