DURING our screening for haptoglobin patterns in different Jewish ethnic groups1,2, we found a sample from a Kurdish boy (from Urmia in the Kurdish part of Persia) which appeared to contain a ‘Johnson type of haptoglobin pattern’3. (We thank Prof. H. Harris (London) for comparing it with a known sample and identifying it.) Further examination of the family revealed the following results (Figs. 1 and 2). The mother of the propositus had a Johnson pattern of Hp and the father a Hp2–1 pattern; of the 7 children two had Johnson type Hp, one Hp1–1, one Hp2–1, two ‘ahaptoglobinaemia’ and one a hypohaptoglobinaemia. Two-and-a-half-fold concentration of the two ahaptoglobinaemic and the hypohaptoglobinaemic sera revealed the presence of haptoglobin in all of them. However, the exact pattern in them could not be determined.