[Gimp-user] Dealing with image degradation in old negatives?

[Keith Purtell <keithpurtell keithpurtell com>]

The image link below goes to an enlarged portion of a scanned negative 
from the mid 1980s. One of the strange things I see are small spots like 
photo grain that have turned yellow.

I've considered selecting by color and changing them to flesh tone or 
gray, or carefully using Gaussian blur, wavelet decompose, etc. (Someone 
I know wants to publish the entire image.)

Any comments before I proceed?

http://imgur.com/K6Vrnhd