'Unusual'

Disease Rate

A Brookhaven National Laboratory medical team, from Long Island, New York, had some unusual experiences during the recent annual medical survey of Rongelap and Utirik in the Marshall Islands. On Rongelap, the people refused to be examined unless Dr Robert Conard, leader of the team, agreed to give them food.

They also refused to eat cooked coconut crabs until they saw every one in the team eating them. They had asked Dr Conard if the crabs, from the southernmost island of Rongelap atoll were safe for human consumption. Dr Conard assured them they were, but the people refused to eat them till they had been tested.

Dr Conard warned them, however, not to eat crabs from the northern most island till they had been tested.

The “blackmail” over food oc curred during a village meeting. The people told Dr Conard that gather ing food was a task which was in terrupted by the medical examina tions. If they were to be examined, the team would have to provide them with food for the whole day.

The meeting was adjourned im mediately to unload food, which was divided equally among the people by the chief magistrates. It consisted of rice, flour, sugar and some meat, plus some gift food from friends and re latives from Ebeye.

It transpired during the visit that the people of Rongelap and Utirik had been short of food for months because the field trip ships had not brought any since December.

The medical examinations revealed that four people of Rongelap had thyroid problems. Two were exposed to radiation fallout; two were not.

There was a thyroid patient—from Ebeye, who had not been exposed to radiation fallout. All patients were flown to Majuro for treatment.

The team also conducted special examinations for diabetes, to help the Marshalls District Health Ser vices to collect information about the number of diabetics in the dis trict. These examinations showed that at least 20 per cent of those examined were suffering from dia betes.

That was described as unusual by one of the BNL doctors. He said it was a higher percentage than gener ally found in the US. Another doctor said the BNL was doing studies of diabetes in the area to attract top men in the field to go there.