BABBOTT 



whose diet has become so perverted that they might be cal- 

 cium deficient. This matter of diet is a vexing socio-economic 

 situation here in the northland. For instance, at Anaktuvuk Pass 

 the diet may be highly adequate in years when the caribou are 

 coming through en masse, and in other years, when the cari- 

 bou hit another way through the mountains, the people's diet 

 may be down to a bare minimum level. 



So dietary adequacy fluctuates in these people from time 

 to time. Now, in certain areas where the game animals num- 

 bered in the millions in the past have been depleted — such 

 as the Kuskoquim area — the people just don't get as many 

 fish, caribou, whales or seals as they did years ago. There 

 the former diet has given way to one supplemented to a large 

 extent by flour and sugar, which isn't especially nutritious. 

 But it is a problem that needs study. It hasn't been studied very 

 well, and I'm glad you brought it up. I might mention one more 

 thing. One of the medical cliches of the past held that Eskimos 

 were hypersusceptible to tuberculosis, but it has been demon- 

 strated by vigorous case findings, hospitalization, and ambulent 

 chemotherapy programs in the past eight years, that the tuber- 

 culosis epidemic could be abated rapidly, and I would like to 

 propose that the Eskimos are considerably more resistant to 

 tuberculosis than is generally conceded, or they might have been 

 dead long ago — wiped out as a race. We have to differentiate 

 between medically underprivileged people and hypersusceptible 

 people. They are not the same. 



MITCHELL: Are we talking really and truly about tuberculosis, 

 or are we talking about X-ray evidence of a lung infection which 

 might be or might have been tuberculosis, or a fungus, or some- 

 thing other than, say, the mycobacterium? 



REINHARD: We are talking about clinically proven cases 

 of tuberculosis, the statistics of hospital admission, the de- 

 crease in positive culture results in various laboratories, the 

 decrease in the malignancy of the cases entering hospitals, 

 and the decrease in death rate. These are all rather positive 

 changes that have occurred very rapidly in the last ten years. 

 In other words, there is proof there. It is not a supposition. 



42 



