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The current expedition will make it possible for us to exploit the 
background of one decade of earlier work and effort, and to follow up the 
seroepidemiological and child growth studies we have started. It will also 
permit an expanded approach to the genetics of these populations, and with the 
data we hope to gather, I expect that the techniques of population genetics with 
mathematical modeling of their migrations and interrelationships will be much 
advanced. These techniques are now in press with respect to kuru and genetic 
factors interacting in its ocurrence, and Stephen's latest paper poses a method 
quite applicable to a vast array of other human diseases. We expect to work out 
this kind of study in much greater detail, by getting from these people further 
genetic data to augment what we already have. 
Most noteworthy, we shall attempt for the first time to establish from each 
subject by a biopsy procedure no more than a needle prick for blood collection, 
a fibroblast cell line in the ship-board laboratory, which we shall then freeze 
down in liquid nitrogen, for cell revival later back in the laboratories at NIH. 
This should provide pilot study for all population genetic studies of the 
future, for instead of preserving serum or hemoglobin, or red cells for future 
study of new pleomorphisms by newly evolving techniques, we plan to bank the 
full genetic information of each subject in viable cells. It is the working out 
of this technology under ideal field conditions that we hope to exploit on this 
trip. It has not been done before, and will add greatly to the information we 
already have on these islanders. 
As for the matter of leaving our current program adequately attended. 
Nancy Rogers, Mint Basnight, and John Hooks, among those I hoped to take, will 
not be able to come. These three workers can easily carry our current load of 
laboratory work, as they have often done in the past. This applies to both 
Patuxent and Building 8. David Asher is also not able to join us, and he has in 
the past supervised our clinical liasons, which require a physician, 
completely, and he will do so for the two months of the expedition. Thus, 
NOTHING is left uncovered back at NIH, and all studies that those who are to 
come are now doing back at NIH are either in preparation for these Alpha Helix 
studies or creative work on genetic factors as they affect pathogenesis which 
can be done as well in the community of workers on the expedition as back at 
NIH. I thus request permission for myself. Dr. C.J. Gibbs, Dr. Stephen 
Wiesenfeld, Dr. Paul Brown, and Dr. Richard Ferber and Mrs. Judith Meyer to 
accompany the expedition. We need them all. Dr. Michael Alpers from Perth who 
has worked with us for about a decade on kuru and on these island population 
genetics and growth and development studies will also be with us. He is 
currently in the Department of Microbiology, and the Department of Human Biology 
at the University of Perth, Australia. Professor Jean Guiart, sociololgist and 
anthropologist and foremost expert on the New Hebrides also Chief of Sociology 
and Anthropology at the Sorbonne in Paris will also join us. The other 
positions will be filled by local public health service persons from the British 
Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides Condominium Health Services. 
There is no human experimentation involved, no treatment of human patients, 
and we shall only, as we always do in primitive areas, provide the necessary 
emergency medical care that the local population requires since there are no 
physicians on any of the islands we will work on. Paul Brown will act as ships 
