195 
fruitful for NINDS over one and one-half decades, as witnessed by the number of 
laboratories in other groups in NINDS and in NIH whose major working problems 
stem from what we have started and continue to initiate. 
Finally, Dr. Fox, there are numerous other leads pertinent to our Mission 
which I intend to exploit on the expedition. We know that the populations are 
unusual in an extremely early acquisition of cytomegalovirus and EB virus (as 
well as herpes hominis) virus infection by almost every child. These key 
viruses in modern teratology and oncogenesis research are also causing chronic 
CNS infection naturally and after "pump syndromes" and immunosuppressive 
routines. We have real expectations of virus epidemiological leads in pursuing 
the strange epidemiology of these viruses in these isolates. Please, Dr. Fox, 
do all in your power to make sure that we do not lose this long-sought 
opportunity to exploit this unique situation which has been impossible not 
because of restrictions or limitations of our budget, but only because of 
limitations of our foreign travel funds. The ALPHA HELIX offer is a great honor 
to NINDS and NIH and also solves this problem as well as vast logistic problems 
in the area. It will provide, as the work on these islands has in the past, 
vast amounts of important work for many laboratories in many Institutes of NIH 
as well as data and materials for much of our work on the epidemiology of 
persistant virus infections of man and on genetics of human populations, 
familial neurological degenerative disease, neurological disease incidence in 
such isolates, and in the interaction of genetics with such disease expression. 
I ask your support on the venture and assure you that our laboratories will 
be well covered during the absence of the four physicians from our laboratory I 
have invited to take part on the expedition. I think it would be a dreadful 
blow to NINDS and NIH to be forced to invite collaborators from outside 
Institutions to fill these roles as I will be forced to do if our own team 
cannot take advantage of the offer. It would also be a dreadful blow to the 
morale of the creative investigators I have managed to attract to our branch, 
since the expedition stimulates and satisfies their highest scientific 
creativity and imagination. 
I look forward to meeting you in mid July back at NIH. At the moment I 
have just emerged from several months of work in the bush and I am making the 
final 2 week plunge back before returning. We have at present 51 patients dying 
of kuru and this represents the largest number of patients with known slow virus 
infections of the nervous system under surveillance by any group in the world. 
That it is only 1/5 of what we originally had for surveillance each year is most 
significant, and vast oddities in the epidemiological behavior of the disease as 
it is diminishing warrant extremely intensive surveillance during the next few 
years. Fortunately, Dr. Michael Alpers, our long term collaborator from 
Australia in NIH and now from the University of Perth, is here with me and will 
continue to work for awhile after I leave^. "Bursts" of cases in certain remote 
villages, obscured earlier by overall high incidence, promise to make it 
possible to determine mean and usual Incubation periods for disease expression 
and to identify the specific event of contamination. 
