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Four patients with chronic granulocytic leukemia (CGL) also have Gaucher cells present in their bone marrow aspirates. In one, a child with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the association of leukemia and Gaucher cells seems coincidental since there was a family history of Gaucher's disease. In two patients with typical CGL and one with subacute granulocytic leukemia, a biochemical abnormality is postulated. Increased granulocyte turnover in CGL appears responsible for marked overproduction of glucocerebroside which is stored in the reticuloendothelial system.

TO THE EDITOR:— An article entitled "Evaluation of Simple Precipitation Test for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus," by Jones and Thompson, appeared in the March 22 issue of The Journal, pages 1424-1428. We have been interested for several years, in this laboratory, in diagnostic tests for systemic lupus erythematosus, and we have available a large and varied clinical material with which to test such techniques. The Jones and Thompson test has been employed on a series of 112 blood samples from 95 patients from the wards and clinics of the Mount Sinai Hospital.This group included 35 patients with rheumatic diseases (18 with systemic lupus erythematosus), 7 patients with dysproteinema (gross elevation of one or more globulin components), and a total of 52 control subjects. It should be noted that none of these control subjects could be considered "normal"; all were hospital patients. In each of the 35 persons with rheumatic disease,

To the Editor.—I am impelled to comment on the extensive report in MEDICAL NEWS1 concerning the latest in an unfortunately growing body of literature on fraud in medical research.Each episode is, of course, in itself disturbing. But there is one aspect of each episode that I find particularly troubling and about which I have seen no previous comment. I refer to the actual fate of the protagonist. In this latest instance, he is "now in a second residency program... retraining as a critical care specialist." Elsewhere in the article, his is described as "the harshest penalty the federal government has ever imposed on a researcher for falsifying data."The relegation of a disgraced physician-investigator to the practice of medicine has become the norm in what the JAMA article calls "the expanding annals of scientific fraud." It seems to me that the punishment is entirely inappropriate.I have

To the Editor.—The letter of Dubois and Strain (225:637, 1973) and comment of F. Wolfe (226:357, 1973) with respect to the Lederle Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) Latex Test Kit prompt the following report. In our evaluation of the Lederle test, patients were diagnosed to have SLE by standard criteria1,2 and then grouped according to the presence or absence of clinical disease activity (eg, fever, active arthritis, and pleuritis). Control subjects included normals as well as patients with other rheumatic diseases. Results are summarized in the Table.In this study, as in that of Dubois and Strain, the SLE latex test correlated well with the LE cell test, although it proved somewhat less sensitive.