141 
I finally turned to our laboratory problems and slow virus work last 
night. Paul Brown’s manuscript on an interferon inhibitor in normal primate 
brain and the kuru and C-J disease brain specimens is well done, and represents 
all that he can salvage from so disappointing a negative after such intensive 
work in Paris for a year. The paper should be submitted soon. Steven Brown’s 
paper on Paraguayan genetics is finally in good shape, and I think we can 
submit it next month. Bobowick’s paper on C-J epidemiology is still very 
bad in parts, and Jean Guiart’s paper on Marriage Patterns in Merelava and 
Merig requires very extensive revision. I managed to check over these, today, 
and this is a good start. I hope that tomorrow permits me to go on with 
this work. 
At Sea. . .Honiara to Ponape November 16, 1972 
John Sheridan should have delivered the frozen blood clots and the 
unfrozen, chilled erythrocytes to Bob Kirk in Canberra by now, and the main 
matter on my mind is in what condition? 
The Revco contained the virus cultures of throat washings from Lugugi 
Bay on Rennell Island, and thus Franco ise put them into the Revco on the 
afternoon or evening of November 81 If only we can be sure that she would 
have noticed a temperature change. Obviously she should have immediately 
noticed this, but did she really do so, if it were out? Assuming that she 
would have, the Revco was still frozen them, and would have held its 
temperature still frozen, or largely frozen, through November 12th at 
least. Thus, the clots have been only one or two days unfrozen. This 
is some reason for hope — and such reasoning is plausible, at least. Thus, 
I am proceeding as though the clots were still fine, and we shall see 
what comes of it. We have wired for dry ice from both Guam and Honolulu 
and hope that Paul manages to arrange for its dispatch. 
Radiograms have been flooding into our ship in answer to my many pleas. 
The Genetics Supplement papers I-V are due to come out any day and the Brain 
paper on C-J disease should soon be out since galley proofs have been return- 
ed. Genetics VI, however, was rejected and these two papers on which I 
count so heavily. Genetics VI and VII, which both impinge so heavily on 
our competitive colleagues, Neale, Morton and Cavelli-Sforza, are still 
meeting with obstruction, as I expected that they would. We shall have to 
go over them again and get them out by some "captive editor" who is not so 
jealously involved in what Steven has been doing. It is obvious from the 
criticism Steven got to these manuscripts that those most involved in this 
field have’ diametrically different ideas about what is "right" and what is 
"wrong" with his work... and as it is it stands quite well on its own without 
respect to their criticism. Genetics papers VI and VII, the familial C-J 
disease paper, and the summary of spongiform virus encephalopathy trans- 
missions to primates and other laboratory animals which Joe and I were pre- 
paring, and finally, the Benfante paper on kuru serology in man and exper- 
imental chimpanzees are the papers we must now get out most quickly. 
