Control of disease among Amerindians in cultural transition.

The picture of exuberant health displayed by most Amerindian populations at the time of first contact has been well-documented. Equally well-documented has been the rapid collapse of health under the usual conditions of acculturation. During the past 12 years my colleagues and I have been involved in the study of Amerindian groups in rapid transition.3 Our interest has been directed primarily at learning more about the important genetic parameters of tribal man; and secondarily at the biomedical pressures shaping some of those parameters as well as the ways in which these pressures change during the process of acculturation. It was inevitable under these circumstances that we would become deeply interested in the problem of Amerindian health, and it is this practical side of our work that I wish to discuss here. All medical researchers are committed to the truism that the state we call “health” is a fragile thing of many components. As our own studies have progressed, we have made the usual discovery of a complex interplay between these